I don’t feel like writing much lately. I especially don’t want to write much about healthy eating habits. I find it hard to focus on eating better when I am happy just to have something to eat for lunch. I’m happy to have a refrigerator to have my food in. I’m happy to have a house that is still intact. I’m so happy that I still have my children.
It’s hard to write about anything when there has been such a tragedy so close. I imagine that a lot of people feel like I do. I’ve been through Joplin many times. I’ve driven on it’s streets. So when I see the pictures of the devastation, it hits closer to home than the pictures of Tuscaloosa, Alabama or El Reno, Oklahoma.
The tornadoes that struck the St. Louis area on Good Friday of this year were a horrible thing to happen. Many, many people continue to suffer from the storms that roared through the area that day. But we get to say, “At least no one died.”
The people of Joplin can’t say that.
They have to cope with the deaths of individuals like Skyular Logsdon, the 16 month-old who was torn out of his 18 year-old mother’s arms. His body was identified today by family in a nearby morgue.
Mike Hare is looking for his teenage son, Lantz. Lantz’s backpack was found in the crumpled wreckage of a car he was riding in while the tornado struck. But no Lantz.
I watched a video of a heartbroken man who described coming home right after the
tornado to find his wife trapped. He tried to get to her, but there was too
much debris. After he went to get help, he came back to find his wife
unresponsive, already dead. His infant son was taken out of the ruination of
his home, blue. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him to no avail.
This calamity has the potential to change more lives than those directly involved. It’s not just pictures of a place across the ocean, or even across the state
line. It’s just a few hours down I-44. The people in the pictures are fellow
Missourians.
I’m not sure what I can do to help, but I know I want to. I am so impressed with
how folks are stepping up to offer assistance. My kids even want to help. So I
plan on asking them what they want to do. Then we are going to do it. I don’t
want to let this opportunity go to impart such a valuable lesson to my children.
When people are in need, help them.
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