The Storm

24 SEPTEMBER 2005

It’s been 21 years since I’ve been back home. 

Not back to Cameron Parish. I’ve been back plenty of times over the years. But back to the home where I grew up. 

 After Hurricane Rita made landfall in September 2005 and destroyed almost everything in its path, there really wasn’t much of a home to return to. 

When the forecasts started showing the eye of Rita passing almost directly over Cameron as a Category 5 hurricane, we knew it was going to be bad. We had lived through hurricanes all our lives. In Cameron Parish, hurricanes were just part of life. But we didn’t know it was going to be that bad. 

 We packed whatever we could fit into an SUV and a pickup truck. My grandparents left behind Magnalite pots. Clothes. Dishes. Pantry full of cast iron pots and pans. Tools. Fishing Rods and Reels.

Audrey Daigle standing in her kitchen summer of 2005, right before Rita's devistation.
Getting her big Magnalite pot ready to cook up something delicious.

I left all my childhood and High school memorabilia, packed away in a trunk.

When you are in the direct path of a storm and landfall is imminent, you have to decide which pieces of your life are worth saving. 

And then we left. 

More than 30 years of my memories stayed behind. 

Two days after the storm, I went back to see the destruction first hand. I had already seen the aerial footage on television. I had seen the pictures and heard the reports. But none of it prepared me for what it looked like when I saw it with my own eyes. 

Driving over the Conway LeBleu Memorial Bridge—the Gibbstown Bridge for all the old people—I started realizing just how bad it was. 

Passing over the bridge for as far south as I could see there were telephone poles leaning nearly on their sides. Mounds of marsh mud four feet high lined the highway for miles. 

Then I started seeing houses. 

Except they weren’t where houses were supposed to be. They were sitting out in the middle of the marsh, some of them miles from where they had once stood. 

That was when I knew. 

The closer I got to home, the less there was. Houses were completely gone from their foundations. Trees had been ripped from the earth. Yards looked like they had been sandblasted. Places that had been green and familiar my entire life were nothing but bare dirt, mud and debris. The strangest part was how disoriented I became. I had driven Highway 82 between Creole and Cameron more times than I could ever count. I knew every curve in that road. I knew where every house was, every mailbox, every little landmark you used without even realizing you were using it. Now they were all gone. I remember going around curves I had traveled my entire life and, for a few seconds, not knowing where I was. 

Everything looked foreign. 

At one point, I nearly drove past the driveway to our own property. 

There were no street signs. 

No mailboxes. 

No telephone poles. 

No neighboring houses. 

Nothing to tell me, This is home. I finally turned into the driveway and drove toward the place where I had spent the first 30 years of my life.

135 Daigle Road-First view of where the house used to be.

And there was nothing left but the steps that had gone up to the front door.

My grandmother Audrey sitting on the front steps of where
the home she knew for 50 years once was.

Everything else was just an empty yard. 

The 2500 sqft house was gone. 

The portable building where they cooked and held Friday night card games was gone. 

The garage that held the freezers of my grandfather J. Berton's bait shrimp and fish were gone. 

The two outdoor buildings where J. Berton kept his tools and garden equipment was gone. 

Everything. 

I remember sitting there stunned, trying to comprehend the emptiness of it. 

You spend your whole life thinking of home as a permanent place. 

Houses change. 

People get older. 

Families move away. 

But somewhere in the back of your mind, you believe the place itself will always be there. You think you can always go back.

Until one day you can't. 

For 21 years, I haven't really gone back to that spot. Maybe parts of me don't want to see an empty piece of ground and be reminded of where an entire childhood once existed. But lately I've been thinking about going back. I'm not sure if it's for Nostalgia or just to Reminisce. Not because I expect to find the house. I know it isn't there.

 But maybe home isn't always the house. 

Maybe sometimes it's just the piece of ground underneath it—and all the memories that never washed away.