Today my lights are on, my power restored, my cell phone service back, my Internet up. My oven, microwave, blowdryer, and laptop are working.
And I feel guilty.
On Wednesday, the day after Hurricane Sandy hit and the power was still out in my house, I traveled with a friend to various homes he was checking on Long Island to see what help we could provide.
Pictures tell the story better than I can -- some posted here -- but the term warzone was just a concept, more of a television image to me before then.
We saw a water- and oil-soaked home in Bellmore below Merrick road, belongings all ruined-- a refrigerator floated and toppled to its side, a water mark mid-way on a wooden front door that was no more, a once badminton game-ready backyard now a marshland.
We saw 40-foot powerboats strewn about Island Park like children’s Legos, still encased in their winter-ready white shrink wrap, two sitting mid-sidewalk in front of the Ruby Tuesday restaurant on Austin Boulevard, one lodged next to a light pole, one resting in the middle of a shopping center parking lot, dozens here and there blocks away from the local marina they came from.
We breathed in oil-wreaked air while walking in oil-saturated lawns and inside on oil-soaked floors while we worried about creeping mold inside a sweet Island Park home that once had all the charm of a gingerbread house, as local firefighters helped by brothers from upstate came by to check the safety of the oil tank that had detached and floated around the driveway, as did so many other leaking tanks throughout the neighborhood.
We walked along the eroded shore at Long Beach, shocked by the shredded wood that had once been its boardwalk, sickened by the bulldozed piles of sand that resembled snow nearby countless cars that had floated and landed haphazardly mid-street.
Among the most unsettling sights in Long Beach was a roof-top air conditioning unit the size of an industrial refrigerator that had come to rest in the corner alongside a building, a building among so many other buildings and homes six-feet or more deep in sand, salty mud, oily mud, muddy water and the like.
As I say, I feel guilty. My seeing first-hand the devastating impact of this hurricane has prodded me as never before to be appreciative, to count my blessings, and to volunteer my time and skills by getting the word out about collections being held for hurricane victims and about places where victims can get warm or a meal, and join in a fundraiser or two for victims, but still I felt guilty… until I remembered a radio interview I had heard on the 9th anniversary of the Trade Center bombings.
A 9/11 surviving NYC firefighter Tim Brown told the radio interviewer point blank, ‘Survivor’s guilt? I don’t believe in it,” explaining that he felt he was spared because God wanted him here, had further plans for him.
Perhaps those of us who were little affected by the devastation are here for a reason. Perhaps it’s an acute reminder we better do our best to figure out what that reason is.
