Every day the Times-Picayune runs an installment of a series it’s calling Katrina’s Lives Lost. It’s a quarter of a page about the life and death of a member of our community who passed at some point during the storm. It’s sometimes a heart-warming but often a gut-wrenching summation of a life that was ended during the hurricane or its aftermath. Strangely, it runs on page one of the Living section.
I started thinking about all the people we have heard about who have died during the last 3 months. The number is large. We know many people who lost mothers or fathers, friends or neighbors. Many older people who evacuated could not deal with the stress. They left, but in many cases their health problems were more then they could handle. These deaths are not in the official death total, which is really just a body count. These people died in Houston, Dallas, Baton Rouge or lord knows where. They might have passed away anyway, but the storm didn’t make it easier.
One of those who died, while evacuated, was my friend and father-in-law Fred Kahn. Fred had been sick for awhile. But when faced with the arduous task of leaving the city that he was born in, he rose to the occasion with oxygen tank at hand got in the car and left for the 7 hour trip to his daughter’s house in New Iberia, LA. We were all staying there for the first 3 weeks, and it was painful to watch Fred’s energy wane and his concentration falter. He knew there was a storm and that the world was no longer the way he remembered it, but he wasn’t sure what was going on directly around him. Fred was in exile 2 months slowly losing ground before he slumped over while watching a football game and left us. It makes me very sad that he had to endure so much hardship at the end of his life. He was a sweet and decent man. We miss him.
