Living below sea level
keeping the water out by a dike system
Storms that breach the dike system and the resulting floods and destruction have done catastrophic damage. New Orleans will never be the same again.
Humans have run and left all behind, only to be herded like cattle into stadiums. No dignity or honour in that, simply surviving - if only barely. Animals have been left behind starving to death on rooftops. Animals that afforded comfort have been abandoned and now are slowly dying, watching rescuers work to find any alive. People stayed behind and died while waiting for rescue.
Our stories have this very theme in them. We have built walls around us to keep out the sea, the power of life, the water that can overpower us and carry us away from where we are. Storms may have put us there, or perhaps the storm is what breaks the heart levee, the walls around, and the resulting flood is so powerful, so overwhelming there is no where to hide, no where to shelter, no where to run - we are at the mercy of being rescued.
For some, this soul flooding is so catastrophic that numbness is the only way to survive. Yet have we been living in unreality, below sea level all along? Is this not an unreal place to begin with? It is our own reality but may not be truth. Truth as opposed to lies we have believed.
The levee broke and flooded their world. The pain of what they lived in, with and through and the losses were too great and they took their own lives. Suicide.
Maybe it is a slow leak, not a sudden massive flooding, but the slow leak that little by little swamps hope and energy, vision and truth.
The only visible answer is to end the pain, the sorrow, the incredible horrors, by forever stopping the heart beat yourself. Living is too painful. Suicide seems to be the only answer to quenching the pain.
Reading about the law enforcement officers who have taken their own lives, there is a mixture of sorrow and a tinge of pity and contempt in the words I read. I am so sorry for their pain that had to end this way, and sorrow is not a deep enough word to convey the agony their relatives and friends will live with. Sorrow is not deep enough for the tragedy that precipitated it.
Yet I understand their pain that sees only one way out. I have been there - at that very edge of despair that has been dealt a final, and fatal blow. For them this was a catastrophic pain that I can never begin to understand.
I continue to weep with those who weep, for those whose lives can never be "as before". I also weep for those that are geographically no where near Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas or any other place Katrina swept through. It is the ones whose hearts have built a
levee to keep living out, or to protect themselves from the flooding of past pain. Life has breached the levee and in the overwhelming aftermath their soul is barely alive. I pray that somehow their silent screams will be heard today. The pain of a thawing heart is incredibly painful but I do know, yes I really do know, that the spring thaw does bring LIFE through the pain.
I pray for men, women and children who are numb and soon will face the thawing and the incredible pain that will begin then. God help them.