Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

How are you feeling right now?

Sad. Nostalgic. Brokenhearted. That’s how I feel right now.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall near my hometown of Port Sulphur, Louisiana.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina lifted my parents’ home off of its foundation and deposited it, broken in half, across the back levee in the marshland along the Louisiana bayous. Everything was gone.

When the flood waters finally receded, only one building remained in my hometown, the Catholic church which was like my parents’ second home. Heavily damaged, the large brick structure had held its ground, even while the insides had been emptied completely, pews, statues, confessionals, and the altar all rushing out of the huge front doors as the waters receded. 

Everything was gone. And, almost exactly two years later, so was my mom.

My mother really never recovered from losing her home. After she died on August 23, 2007, my cousin told me that my mother had said to her, “I don’t want to be here for another anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.” Well, she wasn’t, in fact, dying six days before the second anniversary of that horrible day.

In the years after Katrina, I would think about all that was lost from my parents’ home: my vintage Barbies, my drum major uniform, the light dove-grey suede cape my aunt bought me one winter, the cut crystal decanter I bought my mom on the island of Murano, Italy, in 1973. The small green painted bookshelf that showcased my best Christmas present ever, a complete set of Compton’s Encyclopedias, which my middle school-self read cover to cover, A-Z. The round Formica kitchen table where we had so many meals and conversations. The pink milk glass sugar bowl with the lift-up metal lid that sweetened every single cup of Community Dark Roast coffee ever sipped in that home. The breezeway with its beautiful terra cotta tile floor and patio furniture, housing my mom’s potted plant collection. The built-in cherry wood china cabinets filled with my mom’s wedding china, and all the pieces of porcelain and crystal she had collected over the course of their 51 years of marriage. All gone.

Katrina didn’t just rob my parents and the rest of my family of their homes. It robbed them and their friends of their very community. My sister-in-law wrote eloquently about it on her Facebook post today:

My heart still hurts for all we lost, our community, our family and friends, our church fellowship. We had a wonderful life. Living beside the Mississippi was a dream. Seeing the ships going up and down the river. Hearing the ships honking all night during foggy nights. I miss knowing everyone …I loved living where everyone would drop everything if you needed help. It was a wonderful foundation for my boys. We have a great life here…But those memories and experiences from Down the Road are what has formed and molded our boys and our family. Nothing can ever take those away.

In April of the year after Katrina, my family flew to New Orleans to visit my parents for Easter. They were renting a duplex about 30 miles north of my hometown, and although a duplex, my mother referred to it as “the apartment” as though it were a four-letter word. It was a very nice “apartment” with three bedrooms and two full baths, a nice eat-in kitchen, living room and back patio. But, it wasn’t home, it wasn’t their home.

The drive down the road, Highway 23 South, to my hometown was quiet and solemn, even with two teenagers in the car. Nothing looked the same. I had heard people say my hometown looked like Beirut after the 1982 siege, but I was wholly unprepared for long stretches where there were only vacant, weed-covered lots, one after another, to the point that I could not find my own yard. When my father eventually pulled off the highway into what should have been his own driveway, I was stunned. Only a pile of bricks where the steps to my parents’ front door remained in the yard. We got out of the car and walked around, still silent, trying to take it all in. I picked up one of the bricks with the least amount of damage and brought it back to the car. That brick, with the name Cedar Bayou cast onto it, is a treasured keepsake of mine.

Gone also was my elementary school, my high school, every house I had gone to for play dates and sleepovers. The football field where I marched in halftime shows. The Ben Franklin store where I had my very first part-time job. The post office and my uncle’s grocery store. The civic center where I finally got to dance with my high school crush, swaying to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” The homes where I babysat every weekend all throughout middle school and high school. The beautiful home of my mom’s neighbor, Miss Frances, with the permanent smell of garlic in every room, who always made me a pan of Italian stuffed artichokes when she knew I was visiting. My Aunt Helen and Uncle Guy’s home where I spent nearly every Friday night of my childhood, having fried fish, boiled crabs and shrimp, and gumbo simmered all day in a pot large enough to bathe a toddler. It was all gone, even the hundred-year-old oak trees that lined Highway 23, “Down the Road” as the locals say, uprooted and swept away as though they were mere young pines. 

So, you can see why right now I am feeling sad, nostalgic, and brokenhearted. I will be glad when this day is over, and with it, the 20th anniversary of that horrible day, not an anniversary to look forward to.