Christmas Tornado
December 25, 2012
On Christmas evening, after the family has gone, bellies are filled, good moments shared with loved ones, we sit and hear the sirens go off as the newscaster tells us we are under a tornado warning.
So we get into our safe place with my mom, sister, and all 3 doggies, Coco who is a peek-a-poo, Buddy, shih tzu, and AnnaBelle an imperial shih tzu - as well my seizure dog.
Not five minutes later we lost power, my brother who lives on the other side of town, still with power and telling my mom it's huge and heading straight towards midtown. He told us that if we were not already in our safe place to get there and stay there! Because they had just named two streets that were only a few blocks away, not far at all!!! Too close for comfort. He then tells us it's heading towards another part of midtown ( where we live).
By this time my aunt has tried to call my mom twice so she answers and can barely hear her but clearly knows she's upset, all she was able to get before being disconnected was, Help! The tornado is going through the house right now!
That She couldn't find the dogs, they wouldn't come
Mom went into hysterics, which is understandable, katie was just scared, I was scared yet calm. I told mom I wasn't going to let her go alone, wherever we go, we go together.
So we parked three streets down from her house, Dauphin Street was unrecognizable, trees down, a woman in a car trapped by a tree that had fallen on her car, she was fine just traumatized. The front of Trinity Episciple Church completely blown out. Rooftops gone, houses I've seen a million times were just sticks, I couldn't tell where I was. We were going through backyards climbing over trees, with dogs in our hands( Annabelle was in her papoose), carefully jumping over power lines, when it seemed like hours I recognized her house, what was left of it. We had to be carried over power lines and a wall by firemen... I totally did not mind this- lol!-
Finally we see my cousin, he tells us his mom is ok. But it was one of those I want to see for myself type thing. That's when my emotions came tumbling through the wall I had built up, when my calm turned into an emotional rollercoaster.
I turned the corner from the side of the house and watched as my mom ran to her sister and just embraced her with grateful love, thanking God for sparing her and the doggies. I then realized too that I was crying, as I walked up to her looking her over to see if she was ok, just I guess had to see with my own two eyes, my aunt before me. I then gave her the biggest hug and kissed her cheek, I told her I loved her then I went to see about my cousins. They were in shock. The back of the house fell on my cousin, Hays's Mercedes, that he worked so hard to get. And Martin lived upstairs which was completely gone, if he would have been up there he would be gone.
Martin and my uncle were on their way back from Martins office and could see it, they could hear on the radio that it was going toward Dauphin and Carlen, their house is on the corner of those two streets. Martin made his dad call her to let her know but it was too late. He though she was being dramatic but she really wasn't, eh? I'd say not.
Hays and his girlfriend, Tara, had just left 5 minutes before to check on her dog. Aunt Anne called him as well and told him to get back that the tornado was going through the house, and Lola and Toby wouldn't come when she called them.
She was going to the basement but had to go down the hallway to get a flashlight that uncle Hays had just given them that day, and that was when the front doors burst open! So she darted into the hallway bathroom and didn't even have time to shut the door. She said she thought she was gone she could hear the house crumbling, glass breaking, the bricks hitting and just crumbling, but it was when she realized the roof was going when she felt it was all over for her. But you see there was an angel watching over her that Christmas night.
Maybe like the birth of Jesus, this was a calling for her rebirth to a different way of living. For a new begining, a clean slate.
It's such a wonderful, priceless beautiful gift to be given a new life. But it's all how you look at it.
You have to look beyond what was lost, and see the miracle of what had been saved.
To be saved from your own sort of prison so to speak.
It's a gift not to be overlooked.
In the process of the storm I lost some medicine that I haphazardly threw in my purse at the last minute. I thought would be ok because I had a back up at home. But with this tornado being so unpredictable and with the circumstances, I had no idea when I'd be home again, or what my home would be like. I also carried my important papers with me. You never know.
So I lost two one being an epileptic medication. Trying to get through, trying to leave message after message for the nurse to call me back before I ran out of my back up was like pulling teeth! Finally I got a call yesterday afternoon she said she had to wait for my doctor to get back from vacation to approve it. What abt the other doctors, they couldn't look at my chart and see this was clearly something I took.
Turns out that even after the two phone calls from my nurse saying she has taken care of it, that it had been called into my pharmacy. My luck, my luck.. What damn luck? No call was made apparently, so I was with out one of my meds, which means one thing: seizures!!!!
Stay tuned for bitchfest 2013, when I call my doctors office.
H.REESE ©2013
