Ground Zero

While I was in town on Sunday I gathered up the guts to return to the place where my apartments once stood. I normally stay with my best friend and she lives right down the street, so every time I am in town I am forced to drive by it. However, I have only been there a couple times while the apartments were still standing and the day they tore them down. It's a difficult place to return to, much like the grave of a loved one, or the site of a crash. It has been barely over four months though, and each day I grow stronger in my faith and my ability to cope with the effects and aftermath of the tornado. I decided that it would be a step in the right direction for me to return home. The street was still covered in tree limbs, glass, children's toys and other miscellaneous debris. All the buildings surround it had been demolished, nothing left but foundation, if that.

The woods behind still held siding in the trees, and a bed was left leaning against the tree exactly as it had been before.

My neighbors car was piled with others that had been left behind. I knew that the family was all safe, so I wondered why they hadn't come back for it, but looking at the condition it was in I quickly knew why. Not only was the body of the car beyond repair, but all the windows had been busted out, the inside was covered in debris - it was totaled.

During all of the previous trips I had made back to the apartment we had been inside trying to gather what little things we could from inside the aparment, and in the surrounding areas around it. However, I had not been back into the woods to see if there was anything else hiding in the mess of trees, so I decided I would explore. Before I could even make it into the woods I noticed something that looked extremely familiar, a red fleece blanket. This blanket is one that was meant to be in my mothers bedroom. Eventually it made its way into our living room where I usually fell asleep with it while lying on the couch. Finally it landed on my bed in my room where I would sleep with it every night. It was something that my mom and I continually argued over having. A blanket is not something you necessarily think of as a staple piece but this particular red one, is something that brought back memories for me. To see it rain soaked and discolored struck a chord in my heart.

That red blanket has since been replaced with another red fleece blanket in the living room of my apartment here in Springfield! As I continued to look deeper into the woods I was pleased to find something my mother and I had wondered about ever since the day of the tornado! On the street right next to our aparments were two industrial size dumpsters that the whole complex used to dispose of trash. I stress the fact that these dumpsters were massive! The two walls of my mothers bedroom were destroyed, by what we assumed to be the dumpsters. By process of elimination, we decided there was nothing else that could have ripped the walls compeletely off.

 The dumpsters, however, we never could find! We had hoped that if we found the dumpsters we could find some of my mother's belongings along with it. Much of her room was never recovered because it had been so thrown around in the wind. Looking back between the branches I saw the two blue dumpsters mangled within the brush!

The trip back to the site was just another step in the never ending healing process. I will never be able to forget that day. However, there will be new and better things that will come from it, and I am excited to return to a city that is stronger than ever! I am very lucky and thankful that there were angels among my family watching over everyone and keeping them safe. There is a multitude of different scenarios that run through my head every time I think of that day; things that could have been different than they were, things that kept my family safe. What if: graduation had been at the high school, if it had been earlier or on a different day, if we had been at Cunningham Park for my party, if my mom's boyfriend hadn't stopped at his store, if my dad had left just 2 minutes later, if I hadn't taken my time taking pictures with everyone, if my best friend hadn't freaked out when she heard the sirens. There's a million and one ways that May 22nd could have happened, but I am so greatful that it happened the way it did.

I know that this picture is too big and goes off the page, but I wanted you to see what I saw standing there.

 The barren landscape of the area. The area to the right of my car is where my apartment was at in the complex.