Superstorm Sandy is heavy on the shoulders, and on the heart.

Soaked carpet and padding weighs quite a bit, especially after the twelfth trip to “the pile.” So do wet magazines. Water-logged mattresses weigh much more, as do couches, refrigerators, furniture, boats, floating docks and pieces of lumber.

And my family hadn't yet started to tear up the floor and cut away wet sections of sheetrock when we traveled last Saturday to Brick, NJ to work and take a look at the damage to our summer getaway—which also serves as the home of my grandmother.

(We cut the sheetrock Nov. 11. Scroll down and click to the next page to see the pictures)

The house is across the Barnegat Bay from some areas Sandy slammed hardest: Brick's beachside, the famous Seaside Heights boardwalk, Belmar, Point Pleasant, and countless little beach communities. Have you seen the picture or video of the Mantoloking Bridge that now goes nowhere (and which looks to be damaged as well after just being built to replace a lower, older bridge) because the Atlantic Ocean made a new inlet? We're across the bay from that, more or less.

(We're the “A.” The ocean is to the east, and the now-famous Mantoloking Bridge to the north)

Up north in Morris County, NJ we've been dealing with power outages, if you're lucky. I was dealing with no power until late Nov. 7.

A lack of luck means what you're dealing with is an oak tree in your bedroom or across the roof of your car. I was stunned by the amount of fallen large trees in my hometown of Roselle Park, where my brother and I met up with family before heading south. The town probably lost hundreds of trees—the ones it is known for—the ones after which streets have been named. It wasn't uncommon to see four mammoth trees over within one block, each toppled in the same direction. And in a town like Roselle Park, when a tree falls, it lands on something.

Down south you're counting your blessings if you only got 10 inches of water in the house, like our family did. And you are thanking your neighbor for storing his boat on a trailer rather than on cinder blocks. Because it doesn't take a detective to quickly conclude that boats on cinder blocks floated away into a house across the street—or wherever the tide took it—if you can find it. Trailers must have been good anchors. Boats on them stayed put. Let's remember this for next time.

Before cutting wet carpet smelling like a marsh into manageable pieces, my family surveyed the house and property. We appear to have a new paddle boat. It found its way onto our deck. The floating dock that holds our Sea-Doo's in place on the water is in our neighbor's yard. Thankfully, the Sea-Doo's were put on a trailer before the storm.

A table from a house across the waterway was also in our neighbor's yard, standing upright, with a sheet of plywood still laying across its top, like it had been picked up and set back down.

We accomplished our carpet-removal goal rather quickly—our clothes soaked with the bay's water. The rest of the work can wait, we decide. Then we went to talk to the neighbors. Many stayed for the storm and each might have bragged about it had the ocean not broken through at the Montoloking Bridge. But because it did, the bay filled up and houses got water inside.

(Our pile…Part I)

Each one of their cars was totaled. A brand new Volkswagon sat stranded in one driveway. Still with a temporary license plate, the inside of its windows dripped with condensation. But most said they have comprehensive auto insurance. It's covered. I think: “Wow…how many total losses are there going to be from this storm?”

We helped neighbors move refrigerators and other things into Dumpsters, some already provided by insurance. We gave the guy across the street a hand moving a safe so he could get started pulling up his newly-installed wood floor. He had already hired an independent adjuster.

The women across the street had no flood insurance. I wondered to myself: “How could this be? Your house is 15 feet from water.” Nevertheless, they, as well as most people, were surprisingly upbeat. I took a lot of insurance questions once they realized I might know some answers, especially about hurricane deductibles.

“Just take pictures of everything,” I say, adding a few bits about watching for fraud. I was in charge of pictures of our home and took them as much to document family history than for insurance purposes.

Our next door neighbor pulled up while we were getting ready to leave. We left him alone as he went inside to see the work ahead of him. “I don't even know where to start,” he came out saying.

As we rolled out of the development in the pick-up we saw some residents already had huge piles of construction debris on the side of the road—wet insulation and wall studs and floor boards. Almost each had a stack of random lumber, about the width and length of a dock, or of a boardwalk from across the bay. The sound of rumbling generators replaced bubbling, idling motor boats.

The streets were lined with piles—small rivers of drained flood water flowing from each of them into the street. A couple spent time trying to separate wet family photos. You see people making a trip with a couch or a warped coffee table and they pause for a couple of seconds, looking at the pile. I did the same several times while creating our own pile. These were our possessions. The things in our homes. Little pieces of value, with not as much value as some of the items being tossed by others less fortunate, and certainly not as valuable as a life. But little pieces of the movie-frame memories we have in our heads.

A sign in front of one house reads, “You loot, I shoot.” Police were regularly patrolling and we heard some people had identification checked on the way into the marina.

Damages got worse as we neared homes closer to the bay—the ones that took the brunt of the surge when the ocean broke in. Debris punctured holes in walls. Windows were blown out. People on these streets looked much more sullen and sad and frustrated. The future of some of these homes involves a bulldozer.

But most were intact. That is to say, most were on their foundations and could be repaired. Across the bay, the same cannot be said. There are homes on the other side of the Mantoloking Bridge that aren't there anymore. And the land no longer exists to rebuild them.

This area down here—it isn't just bungalows and boats and restaurants and salt water and sun tan lotion. The Jersey Shore is a place where nearly every person you know has a good memory—has a lot of good memories—and you look at them funny if they don't. I lived in Roselle Park but grew up during my summers on Long Beach Island. We've all rented houses, and rode the Octopus with dad, and learned to surf, and enjoyed Kohr's ice cream or Sawmill pizza, and got the worst sunburn ever, and had summer romances, and came here after prom, and have taken the best naps or built the most impressive sandcastle on the Jersey Shore. Mothers and fathers take their kids to the ocean because they went to the ocean with their mothers and fathers.

And then you realize next summer isn't going to look the way the pictures in our minds say it should look. Things could, for the most part—by some miracle, be the same. But they'll be different. At least for a while.

The shore is still going to be the shore. Maybe come Memorial Day it'll call us a little louder and we'll rally, and we'll respect it a little more.

Pile Part Deux

Another look at Pile 2, with new and improved Pile 1 in the background. Word is trucks will be by soon to pick this up.

I took many pictures like this. I'll spare you them all. But the next two give you a good idea of what a foot of water in your house makes you do. I can't imagine some other harder-hit places. We thought we'd get away with cutting 2 feet of sheetrock. But the water was absorbed higher than that–so we went up to 4 feet.

Someone else's mess. They do say the Christmas season starts earlier every year.

Insulation could be the worst part of clean-up…from the juxtaposition of the bright pink to the way the a giant pile of the soggy stuff just looks depressing. Plus, you feel it in your throat the day after. Trust me.

Sunrise in Brick, NJ. Nov. 11, 2012.

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