Occasionally, there will be a dramatic step of rebuilding here; an organization will come in and within a day they’ll have built a playground or completely demolished a building. Most of the time, though, it’s gradual. One week you’ll see a large group of volunteers congregating around a house, hauling furniture and drywall and other moldy remains to an enormous pile on the sidewalk. Months later you’ll notice a smaller group who has come to work on the electrical and plumbing aspects of the house. Little by little, moving at an almost shockingly slow pace, you’ll see the house come together. Finally, that glorious day will arrive when you’ll see people moving in, sitting on their porch, laughing and talking and reveling in the fact that they once again have their own home and are free from the binding restrictions of a trailer or long-term house guest status.
That’s how it’s been our neighborhood. Over the year and a half that we’ve lived here, we’ve ever so slowly noticed that our neighborhood has filled out. Across the street from us there used to be an abandoned house; now it’s bright orange and we often wake up in the morning to hear the friends that congregate there joking loudly. Laura, our precious 86 year old neighbor, is finally approaching her dream to move out of her trailer and back into her house. It’s a beautiful thing to see and is a very real reminder that this broken city we live in IS coming back. When we moved in, our only neighbors lived in the house diagonally across the street from us, along with a few others scattered down the street. Now, we are surrounded by them and it is beautiful.
Those neighbors diagonally across the street from us? Wow, what a household! The house is actually a quadroplex- four different houses combined into one structure. Many of those neighbors were related to each other; they were friends and family and while we never quite figured out how they were all related, we loved the constant action that always seemed to be happening at their house. We fell in love with the three little boys who lived there. Colby, Christian, and Corey came in and out of our house with a certain air of authority. They knew we couldn’t resist them, so they would knock on our door and race in, clanging on our laptops and picking up any random items we had laying around. Sometimes we’d play ball with them; mostly, we just enjoyed the life they brought to the neighborhood. They moved out of that rambling house over the summer and moved into their own house. They still came back to visit their family in that house, so we continued to see them on the occasion.
On Valentine’s Day this year, their mom died in a car accident.
We didn’t know Carolyn like we knew her children, but her death was still a stunning shock. We mourned for her and for her family and especially for her three little boys.
Yesterday was Carolyn’s funeral. The five of us went, sitting silently as we tried to let it sink in that she was truly gone and that Christian, Colby, and Corey were truly orphans. Don’t get me wrong; those little boys have a host of aunts and uncles who will take care of them. But to see them standing there so silently, shell shocked… it was heart-breaking. Carolyn’s death had nothing to do with Katrina or the corruption of New Orleans; it was just a tragedy of life, the pain it caused completely independent from the usual reasons of pain in New Orleans.
Carolyn loved Jesus and she’s home now. I’m happy for her… but my heart breaks for the three precious little boys who will grow up without a mother.
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