Jake McLinden

Lighting Up the Darkness

Many years of working construction for my father gave me skills that proved very useful for the work we did in Mississippi. Every summer since freshman year of high school, I have gone on a weeklong trip down to Mississippi with my church to help out those who are still struggling from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, or those who simply don’t have the means to help themselves. The trip, organized by my father himself, usually consists of 50-70 high-school age teens and anywhere from 15-20 adult leaders that drive the vans we take to the worksites. On the long anticipated Sunday morning upon which we depart, we gather in the basement of St. Mary’s Church, most years around 4 am, depending on when our flight was, and then load onto the yellow school buses to make our commute Logan Airport in the wee hours of the morning.
Wearing our matching mission trip t-shirts, our entire crew floods the baggage check and security lines in the airport with seas of people in whatever vibrant color of t-shirt was picked to be worn to the airport that year. After a quality airport breakfast from Dunks, we pack onto the plane and then were off to my favorite place in the world. Our group leaves little room for other passengers on the plane. Free margaritas were offered to the six passengers that were not with our group during my first trip by the sympathetic stewardesses for having to deal with us rowdy kids.
Some years we were lucky enough to have a layover in between connecting flights. Having to sit around in an airport for a couple hours waiting for your next flight may not sound like much fun, but when 60 kids are let loose in airport, we find fun things to do. When we finally land in New Orleans, Louisiana, we retrieve our luggage, split into groups, and then hop in our rental vans and drive caravan style for two hours to St. Anne’s Church in Lizana, MS, where we’d be living for the next week.
Nothing I’ve ever experienced compares to the time I’ve spent in Mississippi. There’s just no better feeling than knowing that you have drastically improved someone’s life. Someone who feels like they have nothing to live for suddenly has hope again and they will never forget you for it. Every year is an incredible, yet unique experience in it’s own way, but my most recent trip, during the summer before I left for college, stands out among the rest.
We were told we’d be doing work for a woman named Velia, cleaning up her yard and potentially building her a shed, but that’s all we were told. Upon arriving at the address given to us, at first we weren’t sure we were at the right place. There was a mailbox, but no house. We parked the vans across the street and got out to survey our new worksite. In the front, wooden stairs lead up to a gated white picket fence surrounded by overgrown plant life and trees. Behind the fence was a predominantly empty sand-covered lot. In the middle of the lot, 6 charred 10”x10” posts jutted out of the ground in a rectangular fashion that looked like it used to support a house. Unused lumber was strewn around the lot. In the driveway, a large pile of bricks sat next to an even larger pile of sand. We walked up to the chain link fence that guarded the driveway and called over but got no response. We pulled the gate aside and entered the property. The only structure on the lot was a deck that surrounded an aboveground swimming pool. The first thing I noticed when walking up was an articulately decorated sign that sent a simple, yet inspiring message; ‘Light up the Darkness.’ This message stuck with me the entire trip. Next to the sign, the deck opened up to reveal a fountain trickling down into a small koi pond filled with elegant white and gold colored fish. A statue of a little boy holding a fishing rod sat on the edge of the koi pond, his stone feet barely touching the water. The deck was covered in a beautiful arrangement of junk, from small stone statues and pool toys, to large potted plants and power tools. Pool floats drifted about the surface of the pool, accompanied by an out-of-place looking, fully inflated air mattress. In the back corner of the deck, a tarp hung in between two fence walls, providing protection for a small camping tent that appeared to be where the homeowner slept.
We walked around looking for Velia, not knowing what to expect. After finding a path behind the pool fence we found her organizing lumber in an abandoned lot behind her land. She was wearing faded denim shorts, a sweaty blue tank top, and military style work boots. Upon seeing us, she stopped what she was doing and smiled brighter than I’ve seen anyone smile in a long time.
“Hey y’all!” she exclaimed in a raspy accent that seemed like a mix between southern and Mexican. She was an energetic woman, probably mid-40’s, and as sweet as can be. She took us on a tour of her yard and told us about all the different jobs she would need help with and she never missed an opportunity to tell us how grateful she was that we were all there. She told us about how her lawn mower was recently stolen from her property, and how she bought a new one and now she wanted a shed so she could keep her lawn mower safe. Velia didn’t have a house, but she wanted a shed. We didn’t question it, we were just happy to help her with whatever she needed. By the end of the first day, we had the foundation all set up for the shed, the yard was cleaned up and looking nice, and we all had started to make a new friend in Velia. Bob, the leader of the other van group on the site, and I did the majority of the work on the shed, as we were the only two with construction experience, but everybody managed to help out in some way. The younger kids in the group actually started taking the ugly pile of bricks in the driveway and using them to create a brick walkway through the sand in Velia’s yard.
By Wednesday, we had made great progress on the shed and Velia had started opening up to us more about her life. She had apparently been on multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. An army ranger since her early 20’s, she immediately gained my respect. She told us about how she came home from a tour in Afghanistan in 2005, only to find her house lying upside down on her neighbor’s property. As devastating as that sounds, she was lucky enough to have insurance and the house was rebuilt after a while. The new house was built on stilts 15 feet in the air to protect it from potential floodwaters since she lives so close to the gulf coast. I was absolutely crushed when she told us about how she had let some low-life friend of hers stay in her house while she was on tour in 2011, and came back to discover nothing but the charred remnants of the stilts that once supported her new house, burnt down by the careless flick of a lit cigarette. Velia never purchased insurance on her new house and had been living in a tent ever since.
On Thursday, Velia went out in the morning while we worked and came back with an amazing spread of Chinese food she ordered for us. Making seats out of anything we could find, we all sat down on the deck and devoured the food provided for us. Joy radiated from Velia’s eyes as she saw how much we were enjoying the meal she had provided. Eventually, conversation flowed to days past, but really everyone was just interested in Velia’s story.
“I can’t even imagine what that was like to go through, losing your house during hurricane Katrina and getting it rebuilt, and then some asshole just tosses a lit cigarette on your floor while you were on tour and you come home and your house is burnt to the ground… I can’t even imagine… What was that like?” Bob asked, not really thinking about how these were the most disastrous events in her lifetime. Velia looked like she was about to respond, but the words didn’t make it. Tears welled in her eyes as she began to recall all the hardships she’s been through in the last decade. She had been so strong for so long. Bob sat uneasily, regretting that he had brought back such upsetting memories.
“It was incredibly tough,” she finally said, fighting back the tears. “Losing everything I had, not once, but twice. It’s been really tough.” She had nothing else to say about it, and we sat in silence for a couple seconds lamenting the loss of Velia’s possessions. “Do you have any family you could be staying with?” asked Frankie.
“Oh no, no. Mama doesn’t even know the house burnt down. If she knew I didn’t buy insurance for my house after it was rebuilt, I know exactly what she would say. ‘Velia you stupid! It’s your own damn fault, how could you not buy insurance on your home?’” she said in a thick Mexican accent in an attempt to mimic her mother. “Besides, she lives in Mexico. There’s no point in telling her, I don’t want her thinking that I can’t support myself.” Again we sat in silence for a few moments, thinking of how incredibly hard it must be to go through this alone. Losing everything. Twice. A veteran, essentially living homeless, sleeping in a tent on a lot where her house used to be, and no one to lean on. I have to do everything I can to help this woman, I thought.
After this lunch, everyone felt extra motivated to get as much done for Velia as possible. Thursday was our last full day, and we worked nonstop until clean up time. The shed was 90% complete by the end of the day and we all felt very pleased with the progress we had made. When we were just about done with clean up for the day, a fun idea crept into my head. I quickly whipped off my clothes down to my boxers, stood up on the edge of the pool and shouted, “Cannonball!” and jumped in. After seeing me splashing around in the pool, everyone else followed suit. We even managed to pressure our group leaders into joining us. We tried urging Velia to join us in the pool as well, to which she comically replied, “Oh, no I don’t have a suit. I’ll probably take a dip after y’all leave.” The fact that one can’t see the pool from the street answered any further questions we might’ve had about that. What Velia did next is something I’ll never forget.
Not wanting us all to go home in wet, smelly clothes, Velia ran all over her property finding any article of clothing that would fit us. She found clothes for every single member of our group. I don’t know where they all came from, but she found them. We all looked pretty ridiculous in Velia’s mismatched clothes; Bob and Danny were rocking Hawaiian shirts, Kathryn, sporting a 3-sizes-too-big Three Stooges t-shirt, and I, a hippy-style tye-dye shirt. If anybody saw us, they’d think we were the weirdest group of tourists ever to come through the gulf coast.
That night was our annual cat fish fry back at St. Anne’s and we made a point to invite Velia before we left. Gabi washed and dried all of Velia’s clothes immediately when we got back and they were ready for her upon her arrival. We had an amazing meal with her, the fried catfish was delicious, and we all loved the opportunity to spend more time with Velia.
Friday was the last day. All we had left to do was install doors on the shed, plywood sheath the roof, then lay down tar paper and shingles, and we had to leave by two. Bob and I worked nonstop, not even stopping for lunch, but time was working against us. There was no chance we were going to get the shingles on the roof. I felt so bad, because if we weren’t going to finish it, who would?
When we finished with clean up, we all gathered around Velia to say our final goodbyes. “I’m sorry we weren’t able to finish the shed in time, Velia” Bob said to her regretfully.
“Oh, don’t feel bad about that guys! I could care less about the shed. Y’all have given me something that’s worth more than anything y’all could ever build. Y’all have given me hope again, a reason to keep goin’. Y’all have shown me so much love this week, I don’t remember the last time I felt this good. I can’t thank y’all enough for everything you’ve done.”
Saying goodbye was sad, but I left happy knowing that we had all just illuminated the darkness in Velia’s life. I thought a lot about Velia that night. I thought about how incredibly blessed I was just to have the opportunity to improve this woman’s life. I thought about how probably nothing in my life will ever be as hard as what Velia has had to go through, and suddenly any issue I was having in my life, any problems I had, seemed unimportant, insignificant in comparison to what Velia had gone through. Anyone who can battle through adversity as strong as what Velia had to go through, and still come out smiling on the other side, is truly an inspiration to me. Velia made me realize I will be able to overcome any hardship I will ever run into in my lifetime and for that I will never forget Velia. I will always thank God for blessing me with the opportunity to meet this amazing woman.