BLOWN AWAY
I know, you're thinking of the famed expression from the sixties...or was it the seventies..."man, I was blown away". Well, I wasn't blown away, but an 11-month old baby from Castalian Springs, Tennessee was. The violent tornados that ripped through parts of Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee last week resulted in one of the 15 worst death tolls since 1950. The damage was unimaginable. The storms were of the extreme variety that are becoming more and more commonplace. Super-sized twisters that cut a wide swath, and last and last. The Gary Bonds of weather systems. These tornados, according to witnesses, would sit and spin, grinding everything around them like a giant wood-chipper. These accounts always leave me trying to imagine the depth of fear that must accompany riding out one of these monsters. People describe the sound in the most astonishing ways, so heartfelt, the fear still lingering in their eyes, that one can sense the lasting impression that undoubtedly brands these survivors.
Firefighter David Harmon was combing a field looking for survivors amidst the acres of couches, strollers, toys, appliances, building debris, and tons of bricks from a blown-apart post office. The field was muddy, torn up from the lashing of the storm, when he and another rescuer came upon a baby. At first, they thought it was a doll. Motionless, they grabbed the neck to check for a pulse and the baby began to cry. A sound he described as being "like angels singing". Young Kyson Stowell was over 100 yds from where his house had stood moments before. Better than three hundred feet, picked up like a dry leaf and tumbled through the air amidst myriad hazardous debris, all being blown around well in excess of 100 mph, and then dropped like an apple in the mud, face down. Sadly, his mother, 24-year old Kerri Stowell was one of six people killed in this small community. A total, at last count, of 59 people died as a result of these tornados. Yet, in an irony to complex for mortals to comprehend, this little tyke survives the ride, and on top of that, is lucky enough to be found in a veritable sea of junk, probably within an hour or two of succumbing to the circumstances.
I can't help but wonder, what kind of life he will have. Will it change him? Will he grow up to change the world? Or will he be strangely unaffected by it all. What about losing your mother in the same event? Why her? It all raises as many questions as answers, as many doubts are validated as are consoled. It highlights the invincibility of young children, of what they survive. It underscores the nefarious side of nature, the inevitability of it all, the fragility of life, and the non-warrantee nature of our contract with the living and breathing.
When Harmon was interviewed on TV he broke down a little bit. I thought about these first-responders, all over the country, our service men and women and what these people have to see and endure. I'm sure David Harmon had braced himself for the worst when he first reached down to check for a pulse on what he thought was a doll, may even had hoped was a doll, and was preparing to be stoic in the face of another tragic discovery. Already in that out-of-body place that your mind takes you when confronted with surreal disaster. Anyone who has been there knows what I mean. Running on pure adrenaline, putting the emotion aside to where it will accrue and pour out later, probably at a completely unexpected time and place.
All of us, whether parents or not, have been around young children. Most of us would agree that there are few greater sounds on Earth than that of a young child laughing, playing, just being a child. And, I'm sure, that the sound that David Harmon heard in that muddy Tennessee field was, most surely, angels singing.
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