What a mess

The last two days I have spent trying to sort through and clean up the mess caused when my parent's home was flooded. The Laub pond dam, dike, levy whatever you call it breached when the water level got high enough that water was flooding the playing field next to SCMS. I have never seen more than 3 or 4 feet of water behind that dam. Anyway, there was a large amount of water that came down upon the homes in Santa Clara, one of them being the home of my parents. We always wondered what we would do with all of the stuff in Mom's basement, however, hauling it out into a giant pile on the back lawn and throwing the majority of it into a dumpster was not one of the scenarios that we thought about. Mom and dad's home is situated in a spot that no one ever thought that it would be affected by a flood. The blessing that comes from it all is that, one, the basement is cleared out and two, dad is considering other options besides staying in the home with mom even though they can no longer take care of each other due to mom's decline in health.
I am grateful for all of the people who came to help. Many I know, some I do not, it doesn't matter, they came and helped. We live in such a wonderful community, watching the thousands of people converging on the area to help everyone dig out is just amazing.
Dealing with the aftermath has been taxing. I really didn't have a whole lot in mom's basement that was "mine", my sister had a lot of stuff, mom and dad had 43-44 years of stuff and there was a lot of stuff that came from my grandma's. Seeing all that was lost or destroyed was difficult. I feel for those who lost so much more. Some of the homes will have to be torn down. Few had flood insurance. Many are devastated. I always thought "It's just stuff". Now I know that the "stuff" has meaning and memories attached to it. Hardest for me was seeing Patti's room that has been mostly untouched since she was killed gutted and stripped clean, finding her stuff in the pile and seeing much of it unsalvagable. Hard is the only word that comes to mind to describe it.