Friday

This is a depressing post. Sorry. I'm just not feeling much joy right now.


I am thankful that our home was not involved in the flood damage. My sister-in-law is in the process of cleaning up her home. It's a mess and will take a lot of time to complete. There are MANY others who have a lot more damage than her. It's just unimaginable the damage that has occurred in our county and some of the surrounding counties.


School continues to be out. As of right now our kids will go back on Wednesday but the kids from the southern part of the county are finished for the year. The schools have lots of damage, the roads and bridges are a mess. It's just a disaster.


I will say this. I am so proud of our "volunteer" state. Tennesseans have come together to help each other and have not sat around waiting on the federal government to tell them what to do. They rescued each other, they had fed their neighbors, clothed their neighbors, cried for their neighbors, raised over 1.7 MILLION dollars in a telethon last night on the local news channel. This state is amazing and I am so proud. The work is going to take a long time, the healing even longer. I am so proud to be from the volunteer state.


Everything seems so surreal right now. I just feel kind of numb and I know that I'm not exactly the nicest, happiest person to be around right now. I attended the memorial service last night for my coworker whose husband died 3 weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. 3 weeks. That is unimaginable. After I got home, I received a call from another friend that my friend and former boss Carl had died. He has suffered so much in the last few months and was only diagnosed with cancer approximately 8 months ago. He was our leader at work. He loved John Wayne and he was a lot like him. Tall, strong, just bigger than life. When he resigned from work we were just floored. It was so hard to think about him not being there. He was the only guy with all of us hormonal women and yet he survived! Then within a few weeks we found out about the cancer. We knew that it was bad, but we didn't want to think about this part of it. How could someone like him, who could tell you the biggest line of bull and make you believe it, how could he be gone. We loved him and he loved us. Sure, he was our boss and we got mad at him many times. He was the manager and he had to make decisions that none of us liked sometimes, but we loved him even if we didn't like the decisions. That's the not so fun part of being the boss.


So I say goodbye to someone very dear to me. He will be missed so much by so many. But the thought that sticks in my mind is that he told his family 2 nights ago that he was ready to go HOME. He was tired and he knew where his "HOME" was. He was prepared and he knew that something better was on the other side. Did he want to leave his family? Of course not. No one ever does, but he was ready. I am proud to say he was my friend.


Please offer up additional prayers for his family right now. Not only did they lose their husband and dad, their house was flooded while they were at the hospital. They have lost so much. Somehow it just doesn't seem fair.