Throughout the day, our group took 4 breaks and a lunch. We sat in the shade, removed our sweaty masks, drank cold water from a jug and occasionally groaned. Some of the folks would say something humorous to lighten the mood, maybe poke fun at a friend volunteering or throw a stinky glove. The group would giggle.

I sat quite. I could not take my eye off of Ms. Patty who was still in the house. She was absolutely unable to stop. Unable to slow down. Unable to quit. She wouldnt. She couldnt. She just kept working. And I use that word lightly. Not judging Ms. Pattys productivity, simply comparing her work to ours. We were there to strip her house bear in a day flat, so that she could move to the next phase of 1) getting a city mold test 2) re-wiring her house and 3) getting new plumbing, SO THAT she could then get new walls and potentially HAVE A NEWLY RENOVATED AND ABOVE ALL, SAFE HOME TO LOVE. But in order for that to happen, everything in the house must first be REMOVED.

And that was the part I watched Ms. Patty have considerable trouble with.

I watched her through the broken windows of her house manically pacing back and forth, picking up contaminated chunks of Katrina mush in her bare hands, setting them down, pacing somewhere else, stopping, talking to herself, walking back, picking it back up the mush, counting on her fingers, wiping her brow with her forearm, talking out loud, making another pile, etc. It went on and on. All day. And Ms. Patty never stopped. Never once. She started in the morning and never stopped picking up chunks of tattered wood, creating piles of wet paper on the lawn, stuffing filthy knickknacks in her pockets and so on.

It made my heart so heavy.

I could see Ms. Pattys delusion. Her pain manifested. Her newly developed disease. Something had snapped. Over the last year and change Ms. Pattys brain had undergone so much strain, perhaps something permanent had happened. Too many new chemicals and trauma induced hormones had set her mind in to an endless downward spiral. Maybe from 14 months of Mississippi Mud like Depression, not enough serotonin remained in her head for her mind to function properly. She was left with a broken record of spinning loss repeatedly skipping in her head. The repetition might have just driven her mad.

Perhaps she had lived in a state of denial since the storm. Perhaps she had convinced herself that her lifes memories were fine, that it would all be ok, but then on this morning, this fateful Tuesday morning that she had marked in her calendar so many weeks ago, when she woke up and was faced with 20 masked strangers standing in her lawn sledgehammers in hand, willing and able to take the necessary step of heartlessly carting the swampy remains of her life to the sidewalk for city pick-up and removal, she snapped. With her last synapse explosions of mental energy, she hopelessly clutched at the idea that it WAS all ok, that it WAS all alright and that it COULD BE SAVED. THAT IT COULD BE LIKE IT WAS BEFORE.

But she was wrong.

It was now, in these unfolding moments, becoming unignoreably clear that IT WILL NEVER BE LIKE IT WAS BEFORE. NEVER. Perhaps I was witnessing her mind buckling under the pressure of the deafening truth exploding in her mind that NEW ORLEANS HAS BEEN FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED FOREVER AND LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. PERIOD.