On Friday, March 2nd 2012, I was in the kitchen of a dying friend when he called to me from his bed. “Cj: I think we need to get into the basement.” He had been watching the news and the weather report was grim: a tornado was coming and it was going to be close to his Greenville, Indiana home. My friend had been bedridden for some time — pancreatic cancer had dropped him — and he needed assistance when moving about. I supported his great, wasted body as we carefully descended the steps into his finished basement. I helped him into his recliner, tucked in his blankets, and we settled down to wait for his bride and his daughter to arrive home. When they did, we had what my young son used to call a “tortado party.”
Bill became my friend when he met Nancy, who was already one of my best friends. They married and the child they added to the union joined a daughter who was already calling me “Uncle CJ.” Her sister grew up calling me by the same name. I spent a lot of time with that family, and sat with their pets and house when they went on vacation. They returned from vacation in June 2010, and Bill was complaining of lower back pain and feeling drained of energy. In August of that year, the doctors found the mass that would turn out to be pancreatic cancer. By the time that March day roared in, his health had deteriorated to the point where he had to have a full-time caretaker. I had been sitting with him during the day while Nancy worked.
Nancy and her youngest daughter, Sydney, came home from school early. Nancy was an elementary school teacher and Sydney a high school freshman. They were excited and energized; Sydney said that the bus driver claimed to have seen the twister and had to alter the bus route. We watched the reports on the news, and later that weekend, I drove back to Indianapolis. I passed exit 19 to Henryville on I-65 and was astonished by the damage I saw. I was back in Greenville the next month and in the early morning hours of April 20th, I heard a knock on the door to the bedroom in that basement. My friend was taking a medication that needed to be administered each hour, and his sister-in-law and I were taking turns through the night so that Nancy could rest. A little after 4 a.m., Bill’s sister-in-law said to me, “He’s gone.”
The twister that raked flat so much of the southern Indiana town of Henryville on that March day three years ago could have been a portent to April 20th, but the lives and lands of the town of Henryville have slowly been rebuilt as the community came together to salvage the life they treasured. There are still some holes in the landscape, and the trees that used to line the highway have not been replanted. But the wounds are healing for the town and its people.
I still spend a lot of time with that family, driving down I-65. When I pass exit 19 and see the evidence of a rebuilding Henryville, I always hear Bill’s voice: “We better get into the basement.” A great and emotional tornado plowed through that house, and like the gouged earth of Henryville, there are still holes in the landscapes of my friends’ hearts. But as does the town of Henryville, my friends are rebuilding from their personal twister of April 20th, 2012.