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STUCK MIDDLE: Help your neighbors

I honestly do not know where to start. Our lives have been forever changed by Hurricane Helene and its ugly aftermath.

Too much has happened to too many people for me to even begin to enumerate. I have read Facebook comments from ignoramuses who wonder why we were not better prepared to react when Helene slammed into our region, leaving an evil wake of destruction and death beyond imagination. Fact: no one could have been prepared for what happened. No one.

But I am an optimist … I choose to be both overwhelmed and incredibly grateful for the response not only from our neighbors, but from blessed folks all over the country and beyond who are rising up and showing us that they care. I have expressed a few words of thanks with power crews from as far away as Quebec who have come to help. Our friends from near and far worked together around the clock dealing with an unreal, broken and snarled mess to restore our power; I think the speed with which they arrived helped remind us that humanity is both special and precious.

And it isn’t just the power crews: from across the country emergency supplies of every description have been pouring in, almost overwhelming our agencies, some ill-equipped to deal with tragedy on so epic a level. I got a call from a grade-school friend from back in Wisconsin who somehow knew that I live here. She had organized a truckload of relief supplies and wanted to know how to deliver them where most needed. There are many heartwarming similar stories.

As well, we have become better acquainted with our close neighbors, all of us coping with varying degrees of destruction and discomfort. We live in a gully on the gentle slope of a very old and heavily wooded mountainside. Acres of uprooted trees, gushing creeks, and downed power lines did not keep us hiding under our beds. Instead, neighbors got together and began to recover by clearing trees from our roads and driveways so that we could get out, and checking on each other just to be sure everyone was safe. Our children and grandchildren became good friends and kept each other busy and entertained. We cared for each other as we may not have done for a long time. And we are hardly alone.

Yes, we will recover. It may be a years-long recovery, and it will not be easy. But we will persevere, and we will recover. We are a resourceful and determined community and will not sit back and feel sorry for ourselves for very long. Our core infrastructure has been irreparably damaged, and we must restore it to a better, more resistant level. We hope that Helene was a once-in-a-lifetime event, perhaps just an ugly freak of nature. But her like could be back next week … Milton, anyone? By the Grace of God, he did not turn north and follow in his abysmal sister’s trail.

Help your friends and neighbors, help any way you can manage, and stay safe. We are in this together.   

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Stuck in the Late Middle columnist Bill Humleker writes about family, friends and culture in "HendoRock."