My grandmother Dodie and my grandfather Pat were born in Columbus Indiana. They met there as school children. They married there, in the front room of Dodie’s parents’ farmhouse one quiet Christmas Eve. During their marriage, they moved around for my grandfather’s job but Columbus was always, always home. It wasn’t surprising, then, when after my grandfather’s death in the early 1970’s, Dodie packed her things and moved back to Columbus, into a little second floor apartment with big windows for growing her violets. Even in an apartment, her green thumb would not be ignored.
I wasn’t particularly close to Dodie growing up. She lived far away and I only saw her once or twice a year. But after my aunt (her only daughter) passed away, I stepped in to do all those things for her that only another woman would think of. We just fell in love with each other and remained close until she died on a sunny May afternoon as I held her hand and told her goodbye.
My grandmother was a born story teller. I could sit and listen to her for hours. More often than not, her stories took us back to Columbus – stories of her life growing up on the farm, of exploring the nearby woods and streams until she knew them like the back of her hand, of meeting my grandfather, and of the people they knew and the lives they’d lived.
I’ve been to Columbus many times, most recently to bury Dodie beside my grandfather whom she loved all her life.
Today Columbus is under water. After 10+ inches of rain, the river crested this weekend pouring water into the city. The hospital and nursing homes have been evacuated. Roads are washed out. Many people have lost everything.
I cried this morning as I watched CNN and saw the devastation, thinking of Dodie and her love for that town, of our family who still lives there (they’re fine), and of the men and women whose lives will never be the same.
The people of central Indiana are truly the salt of the earth. They are hard-working, generous and proud. They would give you the shirts off their backs and then ask what else they could do.
I'm thinking of them today.
