The Long Goodbye

My wife and son happen to be in the neighborhood the following day, so they return to the site. The pile is gone, as is the driveway, the slab, even the dilapidated ancient brick barbecue that anchored our backyard. The trees have been saved. It's hard to imagine there was a house there.

The property, like Lorraine Cherry's, is across the street from the forest, and so it will blend in well. Cherry hopes to put in some benches, make it a butterfly preserve.

Jeff Fitlow

The author's son videotapes the ten minutes it took to reduce their house to rubble.

Courtesy of Melodie Matlock

The morning after Allison, streets near Woodbrook Lane were still under water.

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We'll come back someday when all that is done. We'll determine what would be a suitable artifact and bury it somewhere.

Maybe it will be a toy, or a photograph of the house, either as it was when we lived there or as it looked being torn down. Maybe it'll be some remembrances we'll write of our time there.

One thing it won't be is a piece of government paperwork. You just couldn't bury that memory deep enough.