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It’ll be the helicopters. 

It’ll be the helicopters I’ll remember vividly as I recall this strange week one day. I’ll think of the way I was sitting by our open window when the blades of the helicopters thumped out of nowhere, rattled the air above me, and then disappeared over the horizon. 

I’ll think of the way I repeatedly watched them all split through the sky––military traveling in packs, medic ones with red crosses, and little black ones zipping from one place to the other. 

I’ll remember the way I just stood there in front of my powerless house, wondering if the dozens of helicopters were carrying the victims of Helene, the wounded, the rescued.

When small town history talk comes up thirty, forty years later, like it does with Hugo or the blizzard of ‘93, they’ll say, “Helene was a bad one. Tore up the valley like nothing else. Worse than the 2018 mudslide.”

And I’ll think about the time in 2024 when I stood at the sandy, eroded edge of the river along Hwy. 176 and saw where the Caro-Mi restaurant was washed off its foundation, bent and broken, screen door swinging open on its old hinges. 

I peered into the dark restaurant across the muddy and destructive river and imagined the rooms within, where I’d sat with my late grandpa so many times, where my parents had their rehearsal dinner in 1994, where they had shared their first dinner with my boyfriend. 

It was all over in just one stormy morning, in a roaring rain. 

Friday morning feels like so long ago. And I don’t say that because the lack of power or internet or cell service has made the days go slower. I say that because one day after the other, it just keeps sounding worse. 

But it’ll get better. 

In 2018, the landslide created a painful memory for us all. But it got better, cleaned up, and remembered as a tragic moment that simultaneously created a community that grew through it. And this fall of 2024––it’ll become a point in the Upstate’s and Western North Carolina’s history timeline where we’ll stop and say, “It was bad. But it got better.” 

My Landrum readers, Tryon readers, Columbus, Saluda––wherever you are––if you’ve suffered in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, I’m thinking about you. And it might not mean much to you that you’re heavy on my heart, but all I can do from here is tell you that it’ll get better. 

It always does.