Tamara Jones: Matt Deighton grabs a broom and starts sweeping the living-room floor, a chore clearly more cathartic than practical in the ruins of his childhood home. The cozy little bungalow is a heap of splintered wood, jagged glass, broken brick and shredded drywall now, like everything else in this heartland town that disappeared a week ago when a 200-mph tornado tore through just around bedtime.
Greensburg is gone, all but a few of its 1,500 residents homeless, left to shovel and bulldoze and sweep entire lifetimes into piles of debris. Sometimes treasures are discovered -- a widow's wedding band, a little girl's favorite teacup, a beloved Bible -- but mostly it's just trash. Insurance adjusters drive up, take one glance and write "total loss" on their work sheets. The homeless homeowners nod their heads, sign the papers, then go back to sifting.
Once the Deightons started digging, though, three generations of them, something they couldn't describe seemed to be set in motion, and they found themselves reluctant to stop long after it became clear that nothing more could be salvaged. And so they kept digging, for hours and then days, from morning until the evening curfew, because what was being unearthed in the rubble of Sycamore Street was more important than any possession they had lost.
Sometimes, they learned, the wind takes away what we need to give up but can't, things invisible and intangible, wrestled from a stunned heart's grasp.
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