Ok I peeled a bit off one of Paul McCartney's CD titles for the above but it speaks to my point here.
These severe and tragic rashes of tornados this Spring has caused me to think about the subject of personal devastation. St. Louis, northern Arkansas, Alabama and other areas of the Deep South were lambasted last month by blistering tornados; these areas looked like war zones in the wake of these hyper-violent and historic storms.
Small towns are gone. Hundreds have died or were injured and many more have lost at least part of their homes or livlihoods.
People that have lived in a certain region and/or their homes for years now have literally nothing. No home, no cars, no food, no water, no kitchen or living room, no baby room, no bathroom, no backyard to enjoy the outdoors with their family and friends.
Though in a small way, this brings home some sliver of an idea to those effected (and also the volunteers & national guardsmen helping these people) of what it's like to be a refuge. How often have we read or heard about "the thousands of refugees" flooding into an adjacent country from the own war-torn areas of their own country?
We've seen the old pictures that aren't so eye-opening anymore of bomb-ravaged Europe near the end and shortly after World War II. The images of Hiroshima post-A-bomb give us pause, firstly because of trying to comprehend how one kitchen-table-sized device can mostly level an urban region, secondly, if at all, because we wonder what happened to those people that survived.
How did the residents of Verdun handle violently world-changing events from 1914?
How did your average Belgian feel being the on-ramp to war's hell in World War I...and World War II?
What about the folks in Berlin in 1945 in particular?
It's hard for the average American, me included, to grasp the real losing-of-it-all due to whatever life-changing event. One can't just gather up the family and head to the nearest Best Western and hole up for a few days and soon find everything is fine. We freak out enough when the power goes out for more than half an hour; conjure up having nothing at all to power up.
How did those who completely lost their way of life in past wars survive and rebuild?
Maybe a saving grace with these recent storms is there's no Red or Nazi army coming over the hill next, and there isn't another bomb and strafe run speeding through in a few hours. But these fellow Americans still ask that same question:
How do my family and I survive this, and how and where do we start over?
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