In the water

Kimberly Grabinski
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

It’s crazy how emotional pain hurts. How you feel it so deep in your gut, you nearly double over. Nausea strikes as your distraught feelings manifest themselves as physical pain.

When I first saw the image of the women stranded in the nursing home after hurricane Harvey, waist deep in water yet posed there like it was any normal day, the reality of the disaster began to take shape.

There is nothing that can prepare anyone for the tragedy wrought by such a terrible storm, but when it’s not happening to you, it’s quite easy to be numb to it. To say, “that’s too bad,” and go about your business.

But empathy is a funny thing because it strikes, sometimes, when you least expect it. Like when a gentleman at the ball game lost his bus ticket. In that moment, flashes of images flew through my brain. An empty stadium with the man still searching for his ticket. The man stranded outside the stadium at midnight, alone, without a way home.

Have you heard of these things called ‘sin eaters’? I believe it’s possibly an old European folktale about death and the tradition of a person who would symbolically “eat” their sins after death before burial. Empaths are like sin eaters. We take in all this emotion — real and imagined — and I’m not sure what the point of it is but it can be exhausting.

Those women in the nursing home, what was their story? What did they say to each other? Were they afraid? Were there families working desperately to get them out? Despite knowing their eventual fate — they were rescued — I ached for them. For the despair, they must have felt. For the prayers, they must have prayed. I felt it, and with every subsequent photo coming out of Houston and the surrounding areas impacted by this devastation storm, my heart is flooded with emotion, threatening to break like the dams they had to release to relieve the pressure of the rising waters.

But despite this intense compassion, I am not necessarily compelled to act. What would I do? What can I do? I can’t wade through the standing water like a pastor in Houston did, searching vehicles to ensure that people weren’t trapped inside. I don’t have the means to deliver grocery filled-semi trucks and I am too far away to offer shelter to those who have found themselves homeless. I can donate money, at least a small amount that I can afford, and I can pray. Pray that relief comes soon in the form of rains and water receeding. Pray that no more lives are lost. Pray that those who lost everything can find a way to rebuild, both physically and emotionally.

I don’t know that it’s enough, but it’s something.


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Kimberly Grabinski

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Licensed Architect, coffee lover & professional blogger at 730 Sage Street. Dogs and sarcasm make life better.

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