You Can’t Flood Out Memories!

 

“The hurricane flooded me out of a lot of memorabilia, but it can’t flood out the memories.” — Tom Dempsey

Tom Dempsey is certainly no Shakespeare or Thoreau; as a matter of fact, he’s an ex-football player. Born with half a foot and hand but still able to flourish in the NFL as a kicker, he is obviously a glass half-full kinda guy and his words are extremely appropriate at the moment.

Katrina swept away much of his memorabilia, his “things”. But she was unable to touch the countless memories he and his family had made.

Within the past couple of years my parents sold the house we grew up in. I remember texting my siblings something like, “Man, lotta memories are in that house!” But I misspoke just a tad.

The memories aren’t trapped inside those walls. They are in us, they can never be taken from us. What I should have said was, “Man, that house gave us a lot of memories!”

Thousands of people in Houston and surrounding areas have lost their homes much like Dempsey did back in 2005. It might sound tough now, but hopefully they can hold on to the memories that those homes gave them.

One of the memories or images I will take from this disaster is one of all the trucks with boats attached lined up eager to help. Sometimes terrible  events such as this restore our faith in each other.

We know it’s like this at least in Texas and Oklahoma and probably everywhere we take the time to pay attention.

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