One of my bosses stepped out of her office yesterday, a little teary, but smiling. A long-time friend of hers, Faye, had come up in conversation several other times during the past several days, as we talked about the flooding that had destroyed her childhood home in Pinhook, MO.
As my boss explained, Faye was now on higher ground with her family, but she looked down into a valley where the steeple of her childhood church barely peeked above floodwaters. They, along with so many others, have lost everything but their memories of the place their hearts call home.
(The blue house in the upper left corner is Faye's.)
Faye, though, a remarkably talented woman, as you will soon see, turned her pain into beauty. She wrote the song Heartland Home to express both her pain at her home's current state - "the Mississippi now calls it Home" and the joy and comfort she finds in her memories of the place where she grew up.
So, ladies and gentlemen, grab your kleenex and have a listen.
I grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast before Katrina, and I can't tell you how many times I've felt the pain and loss that Faye's song conveys. Remembering the Biloxi and Gulfport and Pass Christian of my childhood still makes my throat tighten and tears come. After floodwaters come and change your home, it's never the same again, though eventually the memories are enough. In the interim, though, I think Faye's song does an amazing job of helping fill the pain.