Anniversaries are usually thought of as celebrations of happy times, special events, and occasions we fondly recall. That’s not always the case, however, but even when it’s not, anniversaries can still serve a purpose. On September 27, 2024, at roughly 2:55 in the morning, a wayward hurricane wrote a new chapter never before imagined in the story of this county. Even though there is almost nothing happy or fondly memorable about it, we will never forget how Hurricane Helene shook this part of Georgia to the core with her massive strength and devastating power. She taught us that even with all the wonders of technology and the sophisticated advancements in everyday life that we have come to regard as our birthright and entitlement, we are still alarmingly vulnerable, to the ravages of uncontrollable and unpredictable power that are present and roam the face of this planet. We don’t always see it because we naturally want to believe that we live in a peaceful, protected place, but that immense power is very much a constant element of life on this Earth.
There is something about having lived through those long, agonizing minutes of fury and assault in the early hours of that morning that shakes you loose from everything that felt familiar and accustomed to. All at once reality disconnected. The trepidation and disbelief of the dawning sun on that Friday morning revealed a scene that was hard to process unless you were just standing right in the middle of it. You were staring at huge trees pulled completely up and flung to the ground like weeds among the random remains of cars, roofs, power poles, and your neighbor’s trampoline. And all you could do was just wonder, “what do we do now?” Well, what you did was to start back even though we had no idea of the enormity of the destruction or the infinite scale of work that waited ahead.
Today, a little over a year later, it’s incredible to see how far we have come, but it’s not over. Between questions about insurance and compromises made in just moving ahead, a million small but significant details hang in the suspense file, unresolved. We are learning that when it’s over, it will never really be the same. Things can’t always be replaced, but the overwhelming emotional need to get it all back to the day before September 27, 2024, has been therapeutic and has impatiently driven this community toward that goal. It will continue that push, and it will continue to make amazing progress and do heroic things in the spirit of remembering and rebuilding. At this one-year point of an impossible ordeal, what we can remember and celebrate is the strength and goodness of ordinary people and the determination to fix what is fixable and provide care and comfort where it is still needed. So much has been done and will continue to be done, and that deserves the remembrance of an anniversary.
