An Unconventional Mother's Day.

On most Mother's Days, we head to church, then come home, take a nap, and then Dr. C makes dinner for me.  This Mother's Day was quite different.

We went to church, but then Dr. C and most of the adults left after sacrament meeting to go help with tornado cleanup.  Since I'm in charge of the Primary, I (and some other adults) stayed to do our regular schedule.

Dr. C working hard to clear away trees and limbs.  Isn't he handsome??

After church, instead of heading home to take the usual Sunday afternoon nap and have Dr. C cook for me, the kids and I headed out to Webster County, MS to help with the clean-up too.  You might have heard of this small town--East Webster High School was hit pretty hard by a tornado.  I had seen the pictures...but they didn't prepare me enough for the enormity of the destruction. 

It was incredible.

Just one of the many big trees that were completely uprooted.

I had a hard time taking pictures because no picture can help someone really understand just how utterly devastated these areas are.  If you zoom out...you get a better idea of the grand scale of the tornado path, but you lose the fact that these are individuals' homes and lives.  If you zoom in to get the details--the book stuck in the mud, the TV smashed to pieces, the smashed Easter basket full of Easter grass, insulation and glass shards--you lose the idea that it wasn't just ONE house...it was many, many houses.  And this was just in rural Webster County, MS...I can only imagine what Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Smithville, Mississippi--where huge swaths of the city were wiped off the map, look like in real life.  The pictures are bad enough.

This pile of rubble was a double-wide mobile home.  It was picked up and flung into the street.  FEMA came through and bulldozed it out of the way to clear the street--and in the process discovered the homeowner trapped in the wreckage with a broken neck.  Amazingly, after surviving the tornado and almost being bulldozed over, the man is still alive, but in the hospital.  Notice the mailbox is still standing. 
That's the randomness of a tornado for you.

Simply heartbreaking.

Part of East Webster High School



Another part of the High School--check out how the basketball hoop is outside the building, on the roof.  And I think that big black piece is from the roof of the brick building above...keep in mind that these two buildings are at least 200 yards apart.  Crazy.



And so the kiddos spent Mother's Day hanging out in the van watching movies...while Dr. C and I, along with many others of the Mormon Helping Hands crew, spent the day hauling away trees and debris for FEMA to come pick up. 

I have no idea what FEMA is going to do with it all.

Despite the unconventionality of it--giving up my nap and dinner seems like such a small price to pay when others so close to home have lost everything.

I'd say it was a Mother's Day well spent.