Sinkhole - Here today, gone today

[CAJUN LADY]

I'm sure most of you have heard, read or watched the tragic sinkhole news that has been on TV since Friday morning. Well, that sinkhole happened about 2 miles from our home to a family that me and my youngest son have been friends with for 15 years. We didn't know the young man, Jeff Bush, that perished in that 60' hole but we knew the family that owned and lived in the home. I spent Friday morning with them, along with 50 news reporters, police men and women, firefighters, emergency personnel and hundreds of friends and bystanders, watching their home of 39 years being probed, poked and stared at as though it were possesed. In a way it was. How often do you hear of the earth opening up inside your home and swallowing someone...you don't.

The media captured everything - every raw emotion, every silent stare, every prayer. The one thing they couldn't capture was the heartbreak that will be felt for the rest of their lives, knowing they will never find the young man body. Or, when the reality finally sinks in that the home they once shared with family and an unsurmountable amout of friends is now leveled and gone forever. Forever.

I got a call from Janell Wicker (she lived in her dad's home and was home when this happened) yesterday afternoon asking if I would come meet her and her dad for a glass of tea at a small family owned diner. She said she just wanted to talk to someone normal...(I had to smile). After talking with her and her elderly father and enjoying a few laughs all the while trying to ignore the television reports showing their family home being destroyed, we drove to what was left and visited with others who had gathered to watch them pour rocks into that deep abyss where their home once stood. All those memories...all that laughter, gone. Thursday night you are watching a movie, the earth opens up and swallows up a friend and Monday there is no sign of where you lived for 39 years. How does one cope with all of this?

I have a lump in my throat as I type this. I can only imagine what they are truly going through. Life is so unpredictable...here today, gone today.

[wagondude]

A very sad event for sure. It's too bad they could not safely recover the lost man. for the family.

[CAJUN LADY]

A very sad event for sure. It's too bad they could not safely recover the lost man. for the family.

Bill, they will never have closure. That piece of property will forever be labeled as the gravesite. People will soon forget that it held laughter, birthdays, birth celebrations, graduations. It will now be remembered as the day the earth opened up under a bedroom and swallowed someone.

It wasn't a normal Florida sinkhole. It was deep...very deep, almost like a ' V ' but then it went into 2 veins at the bottom. Very tragic and sad.