Laying the Dead to Rest: The Katrina Memorial, Five Years Later

Five years ago. August 29, 2008. One of the prouder moments of my professional career.

Hurricane Katrina left a lot of damage and destruction in its wake. I love New Orleans, there is something about that city that feels like home to me, and my career took a very different trajectory as a direct result of the storm that devastated it so. I started working for funeral directors while the flood waters were rising, working at the national association, watching firsthand how funeral service responded, immediately, on the ground before federal operations had even really gotten a foothold. Being a part of that response is the kind of thing that changes how you look at the world, as clichéd as that sounds. The national association mobilized trucks of supplies, sent in teams of funeral directors to relieve the local men and women who were struggling to serve their communities when many of them had lost everything themselves, and I was really proud to be a part of that in some small way.

Eighty-five of the dead were left in morgues, long after the waters receded, and the rebuilding had begun. Unidentifiable or unclaimed, they seemed to me to be a testament to everything we promised we would do and failed. Plans were made to build a permanent memorial, a place to remember all who had lost in the storm and its aftermath, a place to finally lay the dead to rest. Fundraising was slow to start, until funeral service stepped in via the Foundation and became the largest single private contributor to the effort. The first large donor, it enabled the project to secure the site on the grounds of the former Charity Hospital Cemetery, and to pursue other funding. This is what funeral directors do, you see. Honor the dead while caring for the living.

Five years ago, as New Orleans was battening down the hatches to prepare for Gustav, I flew into a city still shell-shocked but fighting back to entomb the dead. Plans for a full jazz funeral were scrapped because of the oncoming storm, but there was something equally powerful about the lone trumpeter, who sang the bodies home. At 9:38, the time the levies had been breached in 2005, bells rang out in the cemetery, in the city. It was all you could hear.

It didn’t get much media coverage outside of the region. Why would it? The nation tried really hard to bury memories of Katrina, of a disaster made unspeakably worse because of human failure, not the wrath of Mother Nature. These were the abandoned dead, anyway, unwanted by family, or without any of their own or centuries old, thrown from their crypts by flood waters surging out of control. Funeral service didn’t forget. They put blood and sweat and hundreds of thousands of dollars into making that memorial a reality because they understand what it means to have a place to go to mourn. A place to go to remember.

Hallowed ground. If you’re ever in New Orleans, take a cab down Canal Street to where it ends at the old Calvary Hospital Cemetery. The city’s scars are still raw in places, pink in others, but this is a place of healing. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it.

For the full gallery of pictures I took that day, you can find the Flickr stream here.

Sorry's Not a Four-Letter Word

A couple of days ago a series of advertising materials put forth by the Episcopal Church crossed my radar screen.  I clicked over, and blinked.  And then blinked again.  I get that all churches are trying to combat declining memberships.  I get that it’s a struggle to find a message that cuts through all the noise and chatter out there.  These days, everyone’s hoping for a creative Powerball jackpot, that little piece of marketing that somehow goes viral.

Well, the marketing campaign went viral, at least within Episcopalian circles, but I don’t think it generated the response the church was looking for.  This isn’t about the ads, though if you are curious, both at what they were and why I, along with so many others, was both taken aback and, well, offended, you can find excellent blog postings [here] and [here] that sum things up nicely.  In short: easy sarcasm is not the way to go.  Humor and self-awareness play key roles in advertising, but I expect more from my church than cheap and cynical.

This is about how you respond when you fall on your face, as an institution, and what your obligations for transparency might be, especially when you are a religious entity, and not a corporation.

First things first: when I saw the ads, and had processed both what they meant and my reaction to them, I sent a tweet to @iamepiscopalian, expressing my dismay.  To my credit, they responded, and indicated they would pass on my concerns. This is how you use social media to make people feel like they are being heard, and I appreciated hearing back right away.

That said, the rest of their response is pretty much a PR failure.  A glance over at the page where the billboards/postcards/advertising materials were made available reveals that they are no longer available.  In their place is the following:

Many thanks to those of you who have given us constructive comments on the billboard and postcard suggestions we had posted.  We agree that the concept needs more work, and we are going back to the drawing board with your ideas in mind.  We sincerely appreciate your feedback and encourage you to keep sharing your ideas and, when appropriate, your criticisms.  We take them all seriously.

I’m not sure what this is supposed to be.  It’s not an apology, for one, to all of the members of the church who support and love the institution for a misguided attempt at an ad campaign.  It’s not public, in that to get to that page you had to know where the materials were in the first place.  There’s no acknowledgment that the ads were removed on the Facebook page, the Twitter feed, or the news feature on the website.

We’re going back to the drawing board, the statement says, but it offers no insight as to how that drawing board came to be in the first place.  I have to tell you, as someone who has been a professional communicator for the majority of her career, the series feels to me like something an outside firm was paid to come up with, something glib and hip and catchy.  I could be wrong, but I’m curious as to who from within the church and its various committees was part of the focus group that thought these were the kinds of messages we wanted to share about our church and its beliefs.  Was there a focus group at all?  How are you going to change your process for next time?  You encourage us to, when appropriate, share our criticisms?  What does that even mean?!

I’d love to give the public affairs team the benefit of the doubt.  It’s Friday evening, after all, and maybe they just wanted to get the material down before tackling this next week.  But this isn’t something you can do halfway.

In short, it’s the kind of non-apology apology I would expect from Wall Street, not the nerve center of the Episcopal Church.  But maybe being just a few miles down the road changes your perspective on things.  If so, I’d suggest coming out to Middle America and spending some time with folks who speak a little plainer, and see a little clearer.

There is so much the Episcopal Church has going for it.  I know that we need bodies in pews to keep the operation going, I appreciate and understand that.  But if you’ve been paying attention, there’ve been a series of articles [like this one] that suggest, in my humble opinion, that the Episcopal Church is better positioned that most to be able to capture the Xers and Millenials that are seeking a faith home.  Here you have a church that is rooted in tradition, with a beautiful liturgy, and a faith foundation that seeks to embrace, not isolate. 

We celebrate our unity in Christ while honoring our differences, always putting the work of love before uniformity of opinion.  I look at the website of the Episcopal Church and I see example after example of how the Church is doing good works, how it is working to bring people together in Jesus’ name.  ERD. Jubilee. Eco-Justice.  If you are looking for messages that speak to those seeking a faith home that engages the world around them rather than holds itself apart, you’re going to find a lot more meaty material here.  Maybe not in 140 characters or less, but then again:

Jesus lives. Come share the Good News.  There’s room in our tent for all of you.

We’re a forgiving sort, we Christians, we Episcopalians.  Hey, 815, have a little faith.  You can and should do better with this.

Five Years a Family

1st Corinthians was one of the readings at our wedding. You know the one, “love is patient, love is kind…” Five years in and I always smile bemusedly when I hear or see the passage. Five years in and yes, love is those things, but love - human love, anyway - is also tempestuous, it is needy, it is painful. Love is present, through everything, and that means triumph and tragedy. It can hurt you even as it sustains you.

Five years in and we have touched all the edges of that spectrum. It is nothing like I imagined it would be. Five years in and while I wasn’t sure at some points if we’d make it to one we are stronger now, stronger together than we are apart. This thing we are building, it’s going the distance.

The thing is, there’s nothing short about life. It’s the longest thing we’ll ever do, here, and while time moves quickly the years stretch out in front of us like a highway that goes past the horizon. If you find someone you want as your copilot, you’re pretty lucky. He is not perfect. I’m not perfect. We’re not perfect together, and this road trip takes a hell of a lot more than love to keep the vehicle in motion. "Some people’s wives," he sighs at me with great frequency, and I grin every time. He makes me laugh. He listens to me. He teaches me. He makes me want to be better. That’s what a partner does. That’s who he is.

You can’t give people advice about marriage, because no two marriages are the same, and we all have to learn from our own successes and failures anyway. But I guess I’d just say that the long-view matters, a solid work ethic matters because, yeah, the whole life-long partnership isn’t going to be a cakewalk. But if you’re committed to that, you find a way to get through even the times when you don’t like each other. You remind each other, especially at those times, that you love each other. You make space, and then the life you build together fills it.

Five years in, and it’s been worth it, every minute. Happy Anniversary to The Mister, my mister, my love, my best friend and co-pilot on this life’s journey.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Autism 101

Two hours this morning, at the center we’re on the waitlist for, another four months maybe before we can get Kid A in. What I noticed, in that room full of people staring awkwardly at their hands or paper cups filled with weak coffee, was that The Mister was the only other partner in the room. It’s terrifying enough to walk down this road, and I can’t imagine having to do it alone.

It was good. I mean, the psychiatrist who presented was engaging. It was not really anything we didn’t already know though I scratched out a few notes about resources or strategies that were approached from a different angle than I’d considered.

At the end of our row, a woman cried through the entire two hours. She was the only one who had questions, really, or was either comfortable or desperate enough to ask them. Fourteen years old, her son, and just diagnosed though the issues were always there. She was a woman at her end, that much was clear. I wanted to hug her, I wanted to hold her hand. I wondered how strongly you had to be in denial to go that long with a kid on the spectrum without searching for answers.

I bumped shoulders with The Mister as we walked out to the truck. “We’re really pretty lucky, huh?”

Yeah, we are.