One month later...
I awoke this morning easily before six a.m.; my morning coffee is actually morning coffee and not brunch.
And now that the reality of an extremely water damaged house has set in (my mother's house, which she can now no longer live in), I find myself mired in the tedium of tasks to reclaim a dwelling structure before entropy does.
At best, I am only slowing the rate of decay, and meagerly at that.
Yet I am compelled to throw these stones at Goliath.
What is perhaps most odd in these recent weeks is how alone I have been in facing the reality first hand, and trying to do something about it. Well, not entirely alone, a good friend came along and insisted she help me get started and another relative helped with a few key pieces of the puzzle. But mostly, it's just me, figuring out what to do next with the reality of the disaster, in absence of the insurance company doing anything at all.
And each time I do something, no matter how daunting the entirety of the mess is, I feel better. I feel like I am reclaiming our lives and history, excavating our history in fact, as I unearth photos and artifacts, tile flooring and true dimensions of rooms as I clear them.
It is a very powerful thing to do.
So, I believe that the flip side of this experience of being left to our own devices--the light side of this darkness--is to discover that those devices are quite extraordinary.
