A reader writes:
I want to tell this story because I am ashamed of part of it, and I think the shame is the useful part.
Devon and I have been married twenty-two years. We built our house in Westmoreland ourselves, in stages, the way most people do: foundation one year, walls the next, the roof when we could manage it. It took us almost eight years to move in. It is not a big house, three bedrooms, a kitchen, a verandah facing the hills, but every block of it has a story.
We had home insurance for the first few years. Then my hours at the hotel were cut, and Devon’s taxi was off the road for months with engine trouble, and we sat at the kitchen table one night with all the bills and decided something had to go. The insurance was the easiest thing to stop. Nothing had happened in years. I remember Devon saying, “We’ll pick it back up by the summer.” We didn’t.
Then the hurricane came through. We sheltered with my sister in town because she has a concrete roof. When we drove back two days later, the road was blocked with trees, and we walked the last part. I saw the house from the bend in the road and at first I thought it was fine, because the walls were standing. Then I saw that I could see sky through the kitchen window from the outside. Most of the roof over the kitchen and the back bedroom was gone. The zinc was in the neighbour’s yard and in the gully. The rain had come in for two days. The ceiling boards were on the floor, the mattress was soaked, the fridge was standing in water, and my mother’s old cabinet that I had been so proud to bring from her house had split down the side.
I sat down on the verandah step and could not get up for a long time. Devon walked round and round the house not saying anything. What I felt, more than anything, was stupid. Every other feeling came later.
I will not pretend we were brave. The first week we just survived. We put tarpaulins over what we could, with help from the young men from church, who went house to house on our road doing the same for everybody. We threw away what was spoiled. We slept in the front room and the one bedroom that was still dry. We cooked on a coal stove on the verandah. The church sent food. My brother in Birmingham sent money straight away, and a cousin in Florida sent some too, which I know they could not really spare.
When the shock wore off, we had a real decision to make. We could patch the roof back quickly the way it was, with whatever zinc and timber we could get, or we could wait and do it properly. The builder who looked at it, a careful older man from the next district, showed us that the old rafters had never been tied down to the walls the way they should have been. The roof had essentially just been sitting there, held by a few nails. He said if we put it back the same way, the next strong storm would take it again.
So we did it slowly, and we did it in stages, the same way we built the house in the first place. First we made the house watertight with the tarpaulins and some temporary sheeting. Then, over about seven months, the builder replaced the damaged rafters, put in proper hurricane straps at every connection, and put new sheeting on with the right screws and spacing. He showed Devon every step, and Devon took photographs of everything before it was covered. We could only afford the kitchen side first. The back bedroom stayed under a tarpaulin until the next year. The ceiling boards took longer still.
We also changed some things. We raised the fridge and the electrical sockets in the kitchen a little, because water had come in under the back door. We put a proper gutter and a downpipe on that side so the rain does not pour straight against the wall. We moved the important papers into a sealed plastic box that lives on a high shelf and comes with us if we have to leave.
And, yes, we took out insurance again, as soon as the roof was finished and the insurer would look at it. It is a stretch. We cut other things to pay for it. But I will not sit on a step like that again if I can help it.
People say to me now, “Well, at least God kept you safe,” and He did, and I thank Him. But I also have to be honest that it was not God who cancelled our policy. That was us. I have had to forgive myself for that, and I have had to forgive Devon, because in my heart I had blamed him for saying we’d pick it up by summer. We had a long talk one night on the verandah, with the new roof over our heads, and we both cried, and I think that was when the rebuilding was really finished.
If I could tell one thing to anybody reading, it is this. When you sit at the kitchen table with the bills and you are deciding what to cut, don’t cut the thing that protects the roof over your head without thinking very hard about it. And if you have already cut it, and the worst happens, you can still rebuild. It just takes longer, and you do it one piece at a time, and you let people help you.
— Paulette, Westmoreland
Editor’s note
Paulette’s letter is honest about the part most of us would rather leave out: a decision made under pressure that turned out to be costly. Two lessons stand out. First, rebuilding well can matter as much as rebuilding fast. Her builder’s insistence on proper roof-to-wall connections means the house is now stronger than before. Second, recovery was never a solo effort. Neighbours, church and family abroad carried the load in the first weeks, much as Galatians 6:2 urges believers to bear one another’s burdens. If you are weighing whether to cancel cover, it may be worth speaking to your insurer or broker about options first, before deciding.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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