What's next for West

Clean up.

Pick up.

Start over.

Cry.

It will be a long hard road for the folks who call West, Texas home. Homes were destroyed. Lives lost. Life disrupted in a way that will not soon be forgotten. And it is that memory (those memories) that will be the hardest to bulldoze down and carry off.

It will take a village.

And a state.

And a nation.

West can't expect to go it alone. It will need all our help. But it will need our space, too. It will need our gawking eyes and roving cameras and microphones to go away for a while. to leave the residents alone to grieve in mass and in solitude. And only as the dust of grief settles, and only then, should we come back in. But come back we must to offer whatever we can to help that great little berg rebuild. Both physically and emotionally.

I heard one reporter say, the best thing that could happen for West right now is football season.  There is a modicum of truth to those words. Normalcy. That is what West needs a big dose of it. And we can all help them with that. Our hopes and prayers is that soon, West can be normal again. And we can stop there on our trips to Austin and to the Schlitterbahn and buy our pastries. And we can pay our respects by recognizing this great little town as just that. A great little town.

And then we, too, can move on and give them their space.