The evening of Monday, May 18, it had been a typical day in our home. I’m a virtual assistant (equivalent to an executive assistant/personal assistant from the comfort of my home office). I’d had another typical day of taking care of my clients and the tasks they needed me to take care of. Due to COVID-19, Keith was home and not working (lots of freetime). Athena was also home as there was supposed to be “online” learning. Yet today’s school system has no belief in this generation to be able to handle anything in life that comes there way so she barely had any actual school work today. The reality was this was our current life situation. We’d become accustomed to how COVID had affected everyone across the country and the planet in general.

Then at 2:30am on Tuesday, May 19, Athena started pounding on our bedroom door and was in a panic. It took me a moment to understand what she was saying in my sleep induced state. She was franticly saying, “Mom, Dad, there’s water in the basement.” Once the recognition of what she was saying hit, I was instantaneously alert. Keith was still incoherent for what was happening. I had to tell him two or three times that there was water in our basement to get him to quickly wake up.

Now awake, we rushed to our basement to see around 6 to 8 inches of water covering the ground. To see this much water was beyond a shock. Our basement was finished. My office was down there. Athena’s bedroom was down there. A bathroom was down there. All of our Christmas stuff. All of our framed pictures from the move were still in there boxes down there. All my scrapbooking supplies. All my yarn and crochet books/supplies. All our finished scrapbook and photo albums. All our books (boxes and boxes of them). Our entire Blu-ray/DVD collections (at least 1500 of them). Almost all of our important paperwork (like birth certificates, title to vehicle, and things like that), plus all the other paperwork. All of my office supplies. All of my Bibles, Bible commentaries/dictionaries, and other Bible related items (at least 30 of them). My MacBook (where all my writing was located because I use Scrivener 3, which is incompatible with Scrivener for Windows). All my writing I had in binders, thousands of pages, from all my quiet time as I handwrite out everything. All of Athena’s YuGiOh cards (hundreds of them). All of my Willow Tree figures and angels I’ve collected since Mari died. All my collectible Barbies I began collecting back in the early 90s. All of Keith’s comic books he began collecting when he was a kid in the 70s. My expensive mesh office chair. All the Rainbow Loom supplies (rubberbands and beads) and the books to go with them. Our Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, WiiU, and all the games that went with them. My baby book and baby photo album. There was so many other things as well.

Something that hit the hardest were the few bins I had left with Mari’s stuff in them. So much was damaged significantly or had to be thrown away. Pictures. Her artwork or things she wrote. Her clothes, especially the ones with sentimental value. It hard to explain everything, but the little I had left I’d saved after almost 12 years since her passing, to lose anymore is still heartbreaking. I thinking losing the pictures is one of the hardest.

Keith and I have been married for over 26 years. We think back to when we got married and everyone was against it. In fact, we were told by almost everyone they gave us about 6 months before we’d end up getting a divorce. Yet, here we are still married after all these years.

Yet, the past 26 years have had so many trials and tragedies bestowed upon us. While we’ve had our happy, joy-filled times, the unfortunate reality is we had a significant amount of hard-times and trauma as well.

Losing Mari, above all other things that have happened in my life, is and will always be the hardest most inconceivable tragedy I’ve gone through as well as for Keith. It felt like it took us forever to come out of the dark haze that swarmed us.

Now we’ve had this flood. Almost 4 feet of water by the time the water hit the highest point in our basement. Just in our personal belongs, we’ve lost at least $50k to 70k, if not more. Then the basement itself and what’s down there is also all lost. Complete loss of the water heater and the furnace. The sump pump has to be replaced. The basement has to be water proofed. The two dumpster it took to get rid of all the ruined/destroyed stuff. The amount it cost for ServPro to help get rid of the water. We just don’t have the money. Then to top it all off, our homeowner’s insurance policy, specifically related to sump pump coverage ONLY allows for a maximum of $10,000 for both the basement itself and all personal belongs. I believe if we could have had everything covered, we may have ended up with at least $100K to $120k, if not more. $10K just is no where near enough.

As a result, we decided to start a GoFundMe (gf.me/u/x7s4ii). While we know we’ll never get the money needed replace our personal items, as some were irreplaceable, we unfortunately do need to raise money fix so much of what’s been lost or destroyed due to the flood.

Keith and I know how hard things are in the world today, and we know many people just can’t afford to donate anything. Would you be willing to share the GoFundMe link with others to spread the word. At this point, a $5 donation means as much to us as those who can give more. We look at it like this: It’s $5 more than we had and is $5 closer to our goal. Every dollar donated we are beyond grateful for and can’t begin to express it through words just how much.

Thank you for listening.