It was a long day of air travel from Lafayette to Atlanta to Cincinnati to Salt Lake, and finally home to Missoula. It was late October of 2005, and I was returning from Louisiana after three weeks of service in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I had been deployed through the Red Cross in the capacity of a mental health specialist. It was my first national assignment and I knew nothing of what I was getting into. What I did know, though, was that I felt so ready. I don't know what it is about disaster, tragedy or injustice that calls us into action, but this was certainly my turn!

I was arriving home on the last evening flight. It was very late and I had not seen my daughter Katherine or my husband Chris for close to six weeks. Prior to my deployment, I had been in the wilderness with a large group of women who had come from across the country for our annual Harvest Celebration, which I've led for 17 years. This event has been a cornerstone in these women's lives, and this year's was equally, and as always, extraordinary. In the days ahead, the blessed energy created by our togetherness would become my cornerstone too. I did not anticipate how often I would draw from this well.

At first, I had not missed my family. I had been too involved in what was in front of me. But over the last week, a level of exhaustion had set in and had brought homesickness with it. I had been gone long enough. I knew Chris would be waiting in the car outside the airport terminal. He had worked so hard in my absence. We had joked about his "holding the fort down" and I knew it had been no small task. My gratitude for what he made possible brought tears to my eyes that night as we taxied in.

I had called home most every day. It was the first suggestion in a long list of self-care recommendations the Red Cross advised. Sometimes, if our supervisor noticed our frayed ends, we were asked, "Have you called home lately?" For me, those calls were lifelines offering calm waters after too much turbulence.

I remember one call in particular. I was driving back from New Orleans. It was past midnight. I had gone in to tour the city after ten days of shelter work in Alexandria. It was my first day off and I was absolutely "driven" to see for myself what the evacuees had been reporting. I had listened to them sitting on benches and cots. They would clutch small tokens of a lifetime, a Bible, a picture, a wallet. They clutched each other-the families that were still together.

I had spent the day touring New Orleans with several co-workers. We had met in Kenner, relying on each other in some unspoken way. We drove from one part of the city to the other and back again. I walked areas off limits to anyone without an official identification, which I was privileged to have. Then we took the interstate (or what was left of it) out of New Orleans, passing the staging area for rescue operations. We headed east over Lake Ponchartrain and into Slidell, where we visited another shelter. We drove through several areas along the lake before heading back into downtown New Orleans. We stopped and walked around the Dome, down LaSalle Street and past Tulane's Children's Hospital. We ended up in the French Quarter. Night was darkening the city, but not so on Bourbon Street. Women were still throwing garters to the men below, though they were mostly relief workers and National Guard personnel. The most popular drink was the "hurricane" served in a 32-ounce cup with five different liquors. Tee shirts were being sold that made a profitable joke out of surviving Katrina and FEMA's response (Federal Employees Missing in Action).

Driving back that night, I was overcome by my experiences of the day. The box of my brain was just too small to hold what I had witnessed that day. I called Chris when it all started to crack open. I was only a few miles out of New Orleans. There was no place to stop, no safe sanctuary, so I phoned home. I felt I was coming undone and could hardly understand what I had seen. I didn't know if the pervasive smell I seemed to have absorbed was petroleum, rot or death, human or crocodile. I didn't know if I had seen a war zone, a nuclear disaster, or footage of life on Mars or the moon. Chris listened to me as I drove for 70 miles. I can't remember what we talked about that night. I can't remember anything of what we shared. But this dear man was such a love. He held my vulnerability and shattering in his deep calm waters. I had never, ever, felt so small. Life had never seemed so big. Somewhere close to Baton Rouge, I lost my cell connection with him, and now I was the one clutching a family token.
It didn't matter that the line was dead.

Upon my return to Missoula my daughter, Katherine, was waiting for me on the other side of security. She was as beautiful as ever. After so many weeks, the sight of her took my breath away. She was the one who most encouraged me to go. She had said, "People need you. You should go!" This from a 14-year-old! Her support never wavered even though she knew the conditions I was working under, and some of the experiences I had been exposed to. In mid-October, when I had been gone two weeks, I asked how she would feel if I stayed for another assignment. She told me again, "People need you. You should stay." Though she missed me terribly, her admiration for what I was doing was far greater.

Our embrace was sweet, but I had to "see" her. I had to take her in, and so I stepped back. My hands held her face and then fell gently to her shoulders. I noticed immediately she was taller than I. Surpassing me in height had been her goal for freshman year. But in five weeks? And then, too, I saw how she had matured ever so slightly over this time and the beginning of high school.

Of all the questions to ask her at that moment, this was the one that tumbled out, "Is Buddy OK?" Some time during my assignment in Alexandria, both Chris and Katherine had begun to report that my young dog was not well. I remember our first conversation about him. I was out back of the barracks where mental health and medical volunteers were being housed. Beyond the buildings there was a small swamp and I would go down there to settle myself and listen to the night sounds. As I sat down there among the frogs, bugs and bats, I knew something was very wrong. It was a feeling that carried a sense of "knowing" far beyond what was being said. It was the sixth sense I have come to respect after 30 years of intuitive training as a therapist.

Buddy was my awesome four-legged companion, almost four years old. He was my dog and no one else's. I loved this dog beyond measure! I had bred him and raised him. He followed me everywhere like a shadow. He was often my co-therapist and always the co-pilot on my many solo van adventures. He always watched me and knew where I was. He had white spots and seven different colors of brown in his dappling. A line went straight down his face marking each side's different color. People would always comment on how unusual he was, but little did we realize just how unusual!

From the beginning, Buddy's symptoms were unlike anything I was familiar with. After a few days, I asked Chris to have a blood test done. The results showed extreme abnormalities, and he was put on a round of steroids and antibiotics. I was told he had not improved, and so a week later another blood test was done. The results were due back the Friday I traveled home. I had been waiting all those hours of flight time to know what the test indicated, hoping for a hope that I could not feel.

Katherine stood before me. I knew she had anticipated the question. But, bless her heart! She held my gaze and confirmed what I already knew. "No," she said as her eyes welled with tears.

We turned and walked out of the terminal. There was nothing more to ask. Chris was waiting curbside and when we came out the door, I saw he was holding Buddy. He stood there as Katherine and I approached, and then the three of us wrapped ourselves around each other, the contact of our bodies holding the weight of the dog. Chris said, "It appears Buddy has cancer. It's very serious."

Slowly, I took Buddy in my arms and moved back. His kisses, usually nose-nipping exuberance, were weak. He felt different in my arms. I pressed my face into his body and walked to the end of the sidewalk where there were no people. Of course, why would this not be happening? Why should it be different or why should I expect it to be other than this? After what I had experienced in Louisiana, I didn't believe anything could unearth me. Not even this! I took a deep breath, then several, and walked back. Chris opened the back car door and I got in.

In the short distance from the airport to our home, my silence began to frighten Katherine. How could I tell her I was OK-truly OK? I did not feel "horrible" or "awful" or anything else. I just seemed to be resting in a place of "what was." A vast quietness surrounded me where words could not connect me to her or Chris. I stayed in that space for a long time. It seemed important that I remain there within a quiet surrender that fueled some inner strength, and the awareness that the previous three weeks had prepared me well for this.

The day after I got home, I took Buddy to the veterinarian research hospital in Pullman, Washington. He was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia-so rare the team had never seen it. It was last reported in the medical journals in 1978. I was told we might have six months. I had hoped for that, but instead we had three weeks.

Katherine and I said goodbye to him in front of an early winter fire. It was a mid-November afternoon and the sun had streamed into the living room all day. Buddy had rested there in his bed, soaking up the warm rays, while my watchful eye saw the tumors actually growing under his skin. In the end, it was a decision of mercy and love in the face of an unavoidable reality. As I covered Buddy's body with his blanket, I knew this was the end of an extraordinary chapter in my life. It had begun in September with the Women's Harvest. It had taken me to the farthest edge and was ending here. I knew I was changed. I didn't know how.

Nights followed where our dinner conversations hinged on matters of loss. Something really important was happening for all of us. Finally after a story I shared, Katherine said to me, "Is this what you mean when you say…" It was in reference to the impermanence of life and the preciousness of only this moment. "Yes, that's what I mean." Someone said to me, "Our pets teach us about life." Disasters teach us about life, too. We were learning a lot in those early days of winter-hard lessons of life that inspire poetry and songs of the heart.

March blew out the last of winter (maybe) and today is April 1st. I have wanted to tell this story, but it had lain in the dormancy of my own frozen winter. In these longer, warmer days of spring, I was feeling myself beginning to thaw. Yesterday, I rode my bike throughout a 5K course among 600 runners. I was assigned as a Red Cross volunteer to provide emergency or first-aid assistance if needed. People thanked me as they ran by-smiles of appreciation mixed with their strain and deep breathing. My presence was assuring to them, maybe even comforting.

I thought about the last time I had worn that Red Cross vest. I wore it for three weeks straight in New Orleans and never washed it. There was never an opportunity to do so. I believe I wore it well and did make a contribution. I had helped ease some small bits of suffering. I did wash the vest after I got home, but none of my experiences in Louisiana have washed away. They are with me always. What endures mostly are the memories of when there was nothing that could be done, when only grace could intervene and kindness was the only hope.

I remember the call I had made to a woman, asking what property damage she had sustained. "Ma'am," she said, "My damage was not of that sort." In the same breath she continued, "I lost my husband. The emergency medical shelter we were evacuated to ran out of oxygen after four days."

How simple my actions were in those circumstances, as uncomplicated as remembering someone's name. I made an effort to learn people's names. I carried a small notepad with me, and sometimes I wrote their name down and a standout characteristic to help me remember. Charles. He was so much fun! He came up to me one morning after I had just come in. He gave me a big hug and said, "I like that you remember my name. It makes me feel good. I know you're married, but we could get married here in Louisiana. How about it?"

Simple acts of kindness. That's what I was practicing, and I was learning their deep and penetrating value, like the runners who connected with me so sweetly at the 5K yesterday. I felt seen and appreciated! My day was lighter because of them.

I arrived in Louisiana after the hurricane's adrenaline had settled and reports began to reveal a national disgrace. This was no place for big egos or wanna-be heroes. The heroes were the people who survived - the people we were serving. Robert was an elderly man who always sat in a certain bench at the shelter. He was in deep shock, silenced by his ordeal. He didn't know his name. He didn't know where he had come from or what had happened. We knew nothing about his medical condition or what he had been exposed to. His care was so compromised we hardly felt he was appropriate for our facility. But there were no other facilities - we were it!

We watched him with grave concern. I looked for him often, every time I walked the hallways. He was always sitting in the same spot. He watched me come and go, and I knew he watched for me to come back. I always acknowledged him, said something, stopped for a moment, or just smiled as I went by. I always told him when I was leaving in the evening.

One day, he told me his name and said it again when I asked a second time. He started to communicate - just words, scrambled and jumbled, but enough so we could gain a sense of who he was. The next day, we found his daughter through the Red Cross registry set up on the Internet. He had lived with her in the lower 9th ward. She was being sheltered in St. Louis. She and her young children had been on one of those buses whose driver was told to "keep driving" when destinations were far away and mostly uncertain. At first we weren't sure Robert understood the good news, but then he started to eat a little. His pallor changed for the better and he started to sleep at night.

Looking back from over the winter, I've pondered how those autumn experiences have changed me. Maybe they moved my mind out to some broader frontier with greater possibilities and probabilities. Maybe they softened me in some undefined way. I think so, even though some days, I'm still hopelessly lost in my drama, demanding that life be on my own terms. But what I know is that life has no opposite. We think death is its opposite, but that's not true. Birth is the opposite of death, and life goes on as it always has-as it always will-though not necessarily in the way we want. Celebrations happen. Hurricanes come ashore and leave their path of destruction. Cancer takes those we love. Life goes on nonetheless.

I have wanted to return to the Acadian parishes of Louisiana, down in the bayou with the Cajuns. I know conditions there are not much different than five months ago. I have thought I could still be useful. Mostly though, no matter where I am, I want to meet life on its own terms with a certain grace and ease.

Regarding my work in Louisiana, people say to me, "Wow, that must have been intense," or whatever descriptor they use. It's the same with Buddy's illness, they say, "that must have been awful!" But I'm finding a softer approach to those experiences and to life itself. I don't need to resist, to make it all about me, or to label it as this or that. Life feels too diminished when I try to fit it in a box labeled me or mine. I am learning to greet life wherever life finds me. I'm holding an open embrace to just what is. I'm leaning forward saying, "Yes, this too."

In Louisiana, on the gulf shore, I walked through what had been a community of about 600 homes, with two small stores and two churches. It had been a modest beach community called Holly Beach with mostly retired residents. When Hurricane Rita came ashore 30 miles to the east, huge tornadoes were spawned. This area had been totally wiped out by one of those tornadoes. I had walked through what was left with mud up to my ankles and with the stench of petroleum and seaside rot in the air. I saw twisted power poles bent to the ground, toilets half exposed in slimy sink holes, scoured out when the foundations of buildings were ripped out of the ground. I saw a hairdryer tangled in a broken tree, a fire hydrant standing bent five feet above ground level. I saw a mangled bike thrown into a berm of mud and rubble, a sewing machine sitting upright on a broken plank, looking ready to use. The destruction was like that for as far as I walked. Not a single structure was intact, not one standing wall or beam. Paved roads were gone and street signs were crushed into mangled wires, tree limbs and weeds. Then I would look down and see an unbroken figurine, a comb or a fork. There was a fountain perched precariously on a slab of cement with water still in its basin. When I stopped walking, I could hear only distant waves lapping softly against the shoreline. There were no voices, no laughter, no bird songs and no motors - no hum anywhere.

I walked back up the beach, my inner landscape as devastated as the outer. I had walked for a while in the gulf waters with shoes, socks, pants and all, clear up to my waist. I had a sense of wanting to come clean, hoping a dead dog wouldn't float by! Back on shore, I noticed a woman with two small children walking toward me. She was some distance away. I assumed she had lived here. Why else would she be here? Besides, no one without an ID showing a local address was allowed in the area.

As she came closer I noticed she was about 10 years older than I, and so I thought the children were probably her grandchildren. They veered off into the water, and she kept walking towards me. She called to them to keep their shoes on and be careful. We were coming together for no other reason than it was our nature to do so. We came closer and closer until my arms opened wide and she walked right in and wept. I held her for as long as it took, and finally she pulled away slightly so I could look into her eyes as she said to me, "And I buried my mother yesterday." We held our gaze, and at some point I said, "I'm so sorry." Then, clasping arms in the way comrades do before a mission in which they have accepted an unknown fate, we parted. She walked one way down the beach. I walked the other.

She never knew my name. It didn't matter. I didn't know her story other than that she had buried her mother yesterday. Before we parted I asked her if the children were her grandchildren and she said, "Yes." I asked if their family was OK and she said, "Yes." Then she told me her mother was 84. "Her heart simply gave out," she said, "But it was a good death!"

She continued down the beach in the direction she had been headed. I heard her calling her grandchildren to her as she moved away from me. I continued in the direction I was heading. I never looked back.

Copyright © 2006 by Susan M. Rangitsch