Word of the Day: Silence.

Silence, according to Merriam Webster Dictionary, is the absence of sound or noise.?

It was mid-morning on September 27, 2024. My grandma randomly texted my siblings and I asking if we had heard from our parents that day. I knew a hurricane was coming into North Carolina, but I didn’t think for a second that it would hit my hometown of Asheville, NC.?

I was at work, so I didn’t respond right away, but my siblings quickly told her no. For the next three hours of my shift, I watched the rain fall and wondered what was going on in Asheville at the moment.

The very second that I clocked out of my shift I called my dad. All I heard was silence. I then called my mom. Again, silence.

Now this isn’t the type of silence when you try to call someone’s phone, and it rings then goes to voicemail. This was utter silence. There wasn’t even a connection to signal that their phone was ringing.

My thoughts run rampant, imaging the worst but hoping for the best. I call my two older siblings asking if they had heard anything at all, they give me the answer that I already knew, which was no.

I go about my day the best way I know how. It was a pretty heavy day, to be completely honest. I was glued to my phone hoping for any communication from them, but the only thing that I saw was social media posts showing the state of Asheville. My TikTok was video after video of Hurricane Helene destruction, all throughout the east coast. I felt sick to my stomach because there was nothing I could do and no way that I could reach the people that I love most.

To be quite honest, I don’t remember how long I couldn’t reach them. I called over and over again throughout the next few hours and even days hoping that they would pick up, but they didn’t have service.

Some time goes on and I finally got a call from a random 828 number, which is the Asheville area code, and quickly picked up. My mom’s voice rings through the phone. Somehow our neighbor had service, so she was able to quickly call me and my siblings to let us know that they were okay.

This went on for a while, my mom or dad calling us off our neighbor’s phone. We didn’t get much information on the situation that was going on because they didn’t even know the full extent of what happened.

They realized that certain areas in town got service, so whenever they could they would drive to those specific areas and call us to give us a quick update. I cherished those updates so deeply in the week after the hurricane hit.

For the first week after the destruction, my siblings and I briefly contemplated going up to bring supplies or to help, but we weren’t even able to do that yet. So many roads were closed that we couldn’t make it.

Eventually, as the days went on, Asheville was able to receive help from people. An influx of supplies was coming in from a variety of different states and organizations, all trying to help the mountains of western North Carolina.

My sister and I made it up about two weeks post-hurricane and got to see first-hand the damage that was caused in the mountains. We helped at our local church handing out supplies and necessities to anyone who needed it. I can’t even begin to explain the number of resources that were provided from random organizations and states and family friends from around the east coast. There were towers and towers of diapers, water bottles, toilet paper, etc. and they were all being handed out to anyone who needed it.

After we finished volunteering, we came back to our parents’ house. My parents house still didn’t have water, so we used water bottles and gallons of water to cook, clean, shower, flush the toilet, etc. My parents and little brother were without running water for three weeks.

I wanted to write this story, from an outsider’s perspective, because I wanted to give some perspective on how the hurricane affected not only me, but also those that I love. My family got very fortunate during the storm and only had flooding in our basement. Unfortunately, so many people were not as fortunate. There are still people without homes, still trees on the ground, still abandoned cars on the side of the road, and still businesses shut down.

When I think about Asheville, and all of western North Carolina, I can’t help but feel a pit in my stomach for all the devastation they have faced. One of the hardest things was trying to reach my family and only hearing silence for those first few days. And my heart mourns for the people that never got to hear their loved one’s voice on the phone again.