Is the anniversary over yet?

For the rest of the country, maybe it is a good thing to be reminded what people down South have gone through during and after Katrina--especially if it reminds them that the devastation was not limited to New Orleans, bad enough as that was and is, and that thousands upon thousands of people across the region, their fellow Americans, are still struggling to get their lives back to some semblance of normalcy.

For those of us who lived through it, it is still too fresh in our minds, something we, our families, our friends and our neighbors still live with day to day. Even as one who was fortunate--whose home was left standing, still inhabitable and soon-repaired, whose losses were only things, whose dear ones survived--I find it hard to relive the details, to revisit the days already lived through. The TV, the radio, the newspaper have all been full of unrelenting retrospectives of what happened, what was lost, what we have yet to rebuild or replace as a community, a region. If I want a retrospective, all I have to do is get out of the house and walk down the street, or take a drive across town. Further than that is a bit of a problem; the bridge that used to cross the bay will take at least two years to rebuild. Just turning off the TV or laying aside the paper doesn't make it go away. Small wonder that some people are overwhelmed, that mental health problems have doubled, that suicides are up sharply from the statistical norm.

We would dearly love to be able to forget for a little while about Katrina. But we hope and pray that our fellow Americans remember.