April 27, 2011 Remembered

120 Seconds

My husband often accuses me of being a pack rat. I meticulously catalog letters, greeting cards, home movies and photographs as if without the document the memory would not exist. A bookshelf in my basement serves as a time capsule of every important milestone in my life, a holder of the things important to me.

A few years back I helped probate the estate of a client, which included documenting and distributing his last possessions. He was an older man and had been sick for some time when he passed away. This type of death never seems as shocking to those left behind, perhaps because after a full life death is almost expected. However, as I sifted through his personal effects I had to wonder if anyone ever rolls out of bed prepared for it to be the last time.

 His wallet contained pictures of his grandchildren, a driver’s license, insurance card and three one dollar bills. A plastic change purse held eighty cents, a toothpick, a button from a pair of slacks and a small metal cross engraved with “God loves you” across its face. Had he known his days were numbered, would he have bothered with having that button replaced or focused instead on sharing those last precious moments with his grandchildren?

Sadly mankind is not privy to such information; we often push through the daily task of living on autopilot. Alarm clock chimes, turn off alarm clock, put feet on floor, and so on until the sun goes down. Repeat, until one day fate relieves us of our boredom. My client’s children never came for his personal belongings. They remained at my law office, a last testament to those things that in life he held dear.

On April 27, 2011, I started my day as I had approximately 4,380 work days before, but in the days that followed, while sorting through the remains of my law office, I smiled when I came across that old wallet and change purse. Would my client be pleased that his totems had weathered the storm?

Meteorologists promised the 27th would bring tornados the size and frequency of which their viewing public had never experienced. Unfortunately, this was not their first severe weather threat of the season. The last, not a month earlier, sent people scurrying home with not so much as a drop of rain falling. This time I was in no rush but eventually succumbed to peer pressure and closed shop. 

            A neighbor walked over to wait out the storm but was nervous because we had no weather radio. To quiet her concerns, I searched around the house and found a palm-sized, bright yellow Liz Claiborne promotional radio from 1990 still in its gift box. The last time my husband complained about my never throwing anything away I had pulled it out as part of my sacrificial donation to charity. My neighbor worked on finding a radio station.

Around 5:00 PM I received a series of text warnings from a friend in Birmingham, Alabama as she was watched live footage of the storm’s approach into Tuscaloosa. Looking out the basement window I saw sunshine. Knowing that tornados customarily travel with a flurry of rain, hail or some combination of the two I thought she might be confused. I opened one of the windows. I just wanted to listen.

 The neighborhood was quiet. No birds chirping, no dogs barking. In hindsight, it was as if Mother Nature had taken cover. Then the wind started to blow. The trees in our back yard began to lean and rustle and snap under a new, invisible weight. I quickly closed the window and handed out bicycle helmets. At that moment I thought of Loryn.

Loryn Brown was a college student who lived exactly two miles from my home in a neighborhood called Beverly Heights.  She was four years old when I dated her father. My close friendship with Loryn’s mother had been described by some as curious but not to us. We both loved her little girl. When my relationship with Loryn’s father ended I still received periodic updates on “baby girl,” from her mom and was even enlisted occasionally to help hunt down a coveted Halloween costume. Then in 2007, I received a senior picture of Loryn and a letter from her mom. Loryn would attend college in Tuscaloosa the next fall. I was honored that her mom asked me to serve as an emergency contact. 

I was so thrilled to be a part of Loryn’s adult life that I was almost disappointed when she had very few emergencies. The last was December 2010, when she was sick with the flu. I had been out of state and hated myself for having let her and her mom down. This time I texted Loryn.

5:00 PM “Are you in a safe place?”

5:01 PM “Yes ma’am! Thanks for asking! Be careful!”

5:02 PM “After this passes u let me know u are o.k.”

5:03 PM “Yes ma’am! Thank you.”

The remainder of my text messages from that evening were received from my friend in Birmingham and read like the transcript from a nightmare.

5:09 PM “Good God. Be careful! I can see it on TV coming toward you. It is massive. Oh my God!”

5:10 PM “The courthouse looks tiny compared to it.”

5:10 PM “Oh my God”

And with that message the power in my house flickered and shut off. A moment later, as the voice from the radio called frantically for Tuscaloosa to take cover, the radio went to white noise. The basement was silent.

5:14 PM “Heading past stadium going fast toward you in Alberta City.”

But I already knew. Meteorologists have since debated whether an EF-4 or an EF-5 tornado rolled over us at that moment.  Huddled in a tiny closet under the basement stairs we listened to the infamous freight train sound as it rumbled overhead. For a split second, the rumble, that I would later learn was created by the twirling of debris, was joined by a suction so strong my ears popped.  The monster took a victim, the giant oak tree that shaded our front yard. It fell back to the earth with such force that the ground around us shook. “Something fell!” I shouted over the noise.

“Do you think?” my husband screamed back sarcastically.

The rumble moved into the distance almost as quickly as it had arrived but I was hesitant to move until I knew we were safe. I texted my Birmingham lifeline:

5:15 PM “Plz let me know when it passes.”

5:17 PM “Now.”

I climbed out of the basement and cautiously opened the front door. I stared in disbelief at hundred-year-old trees thrown effortlessly around our neighborhood crushing roofs and blocking driveways. The entire event had lasted only 120 seconds, and at that moment I had no idea, that 120 seconds was ample time to change my life forever. 

I was standing in the yard with neighbors when my cell phone rang. The contact name popped onto the screen and my body went rigid as my mind connected the dots. Loryn had not texted me after the storm. My arm tingled and fought me like dead weight as I pulled the cell phone to my ear and answered the call.

“Hello?”

It was Loryn’s stepdad. He told me that Loryn and her mom were on the phone when the storm hit Beverly Heights. They were disconnected and Loryn had not yet called back.

            “Don’t worry,” I tried to reassure him. “I’m sure she is fine.”

Then in the background I heard a low moan that rose into a painful cry. “She is gone. My baby is gone.” This was not the hysterical cry of a panic-stricken parent. This was an affirmation of fact, a mother’s cry of despair.

            I felt a stabbing pain in my stomach. I knew I needed to end the call and do something. I promised I would reach Loryn by phone, or by foot, if necessary.

            My hand shook as I dialed her number. It immediately rolled to voice mail.  It was 6:35 p.m., when I texted her, “Are you o.k.? your mom can’t get through.”

            At 6:36 p.m., I went in search of transportation. My Schwinn Cruiser, a Christmas gift from 2004, dangled from a hook in the carport enshrined in a thin layer of dust and cobwebs.  Concerned with not only my lack of bicycling skill, but at our lack of information regarding surrounding conditions, my husband insisted that we go look for Loryn together. We pedaled up the steep hill that connected our neighborhood to the main thoroughfare and were greeted by a wall of automobiles. They were all stopped on the boulevard waiting for their chance to investigate Alberta City, the area in which Beverly Heights was located. Windows were down and people chatted back and forth amongst the automobiles.

I was thankful that our bikes gave us ease of movement between the cars and people as we pedaled toward Loryn. A drugstore lost its roof, the mobile home park next door looked like scrap metal origami, its tenants now seeking refuge on a nearby hillside. Windsor Drive, a hidden neighborhood nestled between my subdivision and Alberta City, once tucked among pine and oak trees, now lay beneath them.

The sky seemed darker, even though nightfall was hours away, because of a thick cloud of dust that draped over the area like a blanket. Power lines still attached to poles lay across the road in some areas while loose lines danced and sparked on poles that remained standing. We swerved between the downed lines, vehicles and pedestrians.

Onlooker delays at traffic accidents have always annoyed me, but as we crossed the intersection that marked the beginning of Alberta City, I suddenly understood. These were not onlookers, gawking at the misfortune of their friends and neighbors, they were storm refugees. And straight ahead stood hundreds more. I looked back at the crowd I had just passed and realized, for the first time, that most were covered in dirt and blood. Some were missing articles of clothing. How did I zip past a woman and not realize she was wearing only one shoe? Every pile of rubble housed someone’s personal nightmare. The smashed carcass of a truck dangled off a curb where it had been discarded like a child’s matchbox car. The side of a red brick apartment building gaped open and served as the final resting place for two unrecognizable automobiles. A dusty little girl clung to a filthy teddy bear and followed closely behind her mother, pulling a suitcase that possibly held the remains of their lives. It was a mass exodus to nowhere.

Most of the wanderers migrated west toward DCH Regional Medical Center and we moved along in their wake. I spotted a local attorney, a lone figure moving east. His expression was hollow and his gait slow and concentrated, pushing forward like a person trying to walk underwater.  He wore shorts, a t-shirt and at least three pounds of dirt. He grabbed both of my arms and said, “I was in the gym,” as if he and I were both privy to the code he was speaking. 

Not having time to figure out what he meant, I broke free and yelled over my shoulder that I had to go find my friend. I would later learn that he was one of nine people who hid in a locker room shower as the rest of his gym blew away. I left him standing alone in the middle of University Boulevard.

At 7:00 p.m. I received a message from a friend in Alberta City. “Honey Alberta is gone including your office.” The message registered, but my brain refused to allow me to process it. I had to find Loryn. After that, I could deal with any other remaining issues like my career. I had to keep moving because Beverly Heights still lay at least a mile ahead.

We continued to backtrack through the storm’s path and I looked around for the landmarks of my commute to work these past four years. All that remained of what was once Tuscaloosa’s city center was a wasteland of exploded brick, cinder block, wood and metal. The surviving trees now leaned at an unnatural angle, their naked limbs outstretched like a child waiting to play airplane. A sports car hung upside down in one tree whose foliage and bark had been completely stripped from its trunk.

And then I saw my office. It was a little brick cottage, painted tan and framed with green shutters and a large green sign that read, “Julie L. Love, P.C. Attorney at Law.” A low brick wall enclosed the small patio that was accessible through French doors in the front lobby. A small portion of the little brick wall remained, the only landmark of the building and business I loved. Suddenly, I was aware of my loss. Not the files, computers, or desks. I had lost my memorabilia. My late father’s Barrister Cabinet, his two wooden client chairs, the scrapbook of newspaper clippings of his and my mother’s early cases. They were all inside when I left that afternoon and now they were gone. I felt a sharp pain in my stomach and doubled over crying out in apology for being so reckless with things that were so precious. I had been careless, and, as a result, had now lost a portion of the man I loved so dearly.

My phone rang.

It was Loryn’s stepdad calling to check on our status. I immediately remembered there was something more important than the collections from a past life, and that was the life of my friend. I pushed on toward Beverly Heights, leaving my father’s memory waiting in the rubble.

As we crossed an overpass I had my first uninhibited view of greater Tuscaloosa. I could turn in any direction and see the aftermath of the gluttonous tornado’s binge. It fed on our houses, our businesses, our trees, growing stronger with each new conquest. I could see up ahead, now illuminated by the flashing lights of a police barricade, the little A-frame church that marked the left turn into Beverly Heights. I let go of my bicycle and began to run.

The sheriff’s deputy at the neighborhood’s entrance looked to be about twenty-five years old. He wore his hair short all over, a good choice for Alabama summers, and his blue jeans indicated that he had been off duty but not anymore. Patrol cars and barricades blocked access into Alberta City from the eastbound lane of University Boulevard as well as Helen Keller Boulevard from the north. Winded and overwhelmed I jogged toward the entrance to Loryn’s neighborhood. In an instant the officer was there, blocking my path and saying something to me. I could feel the blood pounding in my ears, the noises around me suddenly dulled as if I were underwater. His lips were moving and now he added hand gestures, like an umpire declaring an out; likely, because he sensed that something was not registering with me. I looked down at my feet and noticed the Beverly Heights street sign that had been ripped from the ground and tossed into the intersection. “You-- can’t—go—in-- there!” he shouted in a slow and exaggerated manner. The sirens and shouts of passersby began to filter back in now and I remembered what I was there for.

“I have to,” I spit the words out quickly at first, and then, I said it again, louder, “I have to! Loryn is in there!”

The beautiful old neighborhood was buried under trees and power lines and the deputy was under strict orders that no one was crossing that threshold. As we argued a woman crawled out of the maze of debris and shouted to the officer, “We’ve checked door to door, the neighborhood is clear.”

Before his mouth could form the sentence I shouted, “Then she doesn’t have a door!” My husband began shouting “Loryn Brown” at the top of his lungs in hopes that she was mingling somewhere behind one of the barricades. His calls got louder and louder as the officer pleaded with us to move along. I explained that I was happy to go in and find my friend, or he could go in and find her, but one of us was going into that neighborhood. With an exhausted sigh he said, “Ma’am give me the address. I will send someone back in to check it out.” Out of options and feeling I had failed baby girl yet again, I gave him the address and turned for home.

The hours that followed were excruciating. I drained the last bit of power from our computer’s battery back up trying to keep my cell phone charged. I watched Facebook for reports that Loryn had been treated at the hospital. Around midnight my phone’s battery drained again and I trudged out to the carport. My Mustang’s cigarette lighter acted as my umbilical cord to the rest of the world. I sat and enjoyed the car’s air conditioning and then cried at the thought of baby girl trapped in her house in this heat. I prayed for her, as I had prayed off and on all night, and I apologized for not insisting that she come to my house to wait out the storm.

At 1:34 a.m. Loryn’s mom texted, “She’s gone.”

The emergency crew, called by the young deputy, found Loryn’s previously overlooked house, buried under twenty-two massive trees that weren’t even from her neighborhood. She was in the hall of her basement. She had gone low, into the center of the home, away from all the windows. Her Facebook post earlier in the evening joked that her pillow fortress would keep her hidden.  She had done everything right, but the monster had sought her out and taken her just the same. Her father arrived in time to identify a photograph of her body taken by rescue workers on the scene. I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep.

While a red tape tug of war went on between the State of Alabama and the federal government over who had authority to inventory the bodies now stored at a temporary morgue, Loryn’s mom waited patiently to see her baby. She would not leave she said, until she laid her hands on her child. She would wait all night and well into the following day. There is very little on earth that compares to the strength of a mother’s love.

In the days that followed I returned to the site of my office and dug through the rubble. Very little was saved.  I made peace with my losses, partially because I had no other choice, but I like to think that through this experience I came to understand that those things I hold dearest to me will always be safe as long as I remember them.

I have also spent many afternoons with Loryn’s mom, digging through the remains of the Beverly Heights home. Each photograph or notebook we unearth brings a small celebration. I know if Loryn could see us she would wonder why we dig. I can almost hear her saying, “I’m not there.” But to her mom those belongings make up a part of who Loryn was in her life, and regardless of how fragmented the remains, in her death, they are important to the mother left behind. I of all people can understand her logic. I suppose there is no one correct way to preserve our memories because every toothpick, button and newspaper clipping is valuable to the person who attaches a memory to it. I recently unearthed part of a paper back book titled, “Soon Forgotten,” and had to laugh out loud. That will never happen.