by Michele Clayton

Created on: August 28, 2008

Grief was squeezing the life from my lungs. I was unable to even gasp. Willing to face what was before me was no easy task. I managed to force muffled verbiage from my voice that my sister seemed to understand. She stopped the car on Pascagoula Street in Pascagoula, Ms and I got out and ran to the rumble of destruction that lay at my feet, my heart and my soul. I couldn't get there fast enough. I wanted to find the greatest heap and climb underneath the brick, the mortar, the steel, the wood, the work of the powerful force of Nature. What lessons could I or anyone else for that matter learn from such devastation?

"Hide me oh, Thou Great Jehovah," the song we sang in church almost every Sunday, rang in my ears and sputtered out of my mouth in inaudible tones. The tears from my swollen eyes descended quickly and profusely down my checks finding their target on the face of a little girl's doll lying naked on the ground.
Where are the ashes? Where is the sackcloth? Please cover me. Hide me. Envelope me in this moment of death. Bury me with those already out to sea. Pull my cord, my life breathing tubes from my being and take the air, deflating me to nothing.
I walk. I run. I sprint trying to rid myself of this catastrophic tragedy I am forced to face. I see slab after slab, home after home, life after life, gone, never to be the same again. Taken from the residence they knew on this earth. Their refuge. Their domain. Their home. Their photos. Their lives. Their 50 years thrown out on the street as though no thought was given to putting it there for the compactor to arrive and handle it with steel jaws with no respect of burial rites.
Cars in pools, couches in canals, dishes on front yards as a display of lives hanging on a thread. A roof bearing the shelter of what once was is all that is left on one lot. A Mississippi State Flag proudly flies as the only remaining item left on another, protecting the steps to their home. Brick stairs that lead to nowhere. An empty incline to an empty space to an empty life. What is it that I am supposed to be taught? What is it that I do not know that I have to experience such despair?
The letter X is presented as a coding for those searching for loved ones. Numbers in the openings of the letter have certain meanings. One of the spaces is reserved for the dead. Will their lives be remembered by an X? Will they have a proper burial? Will they have peace where they are? Were they serving a God that grants salvation? One, two, three.

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