Flood Insurance
“You don’t just lose someone once. You lose them every single day, over and over again… in conversations you’ll never have, and all the words left unsaid. You lose them in the loose ends of what could have been, and in the plans you made together.” – Donna Ashworth
Flood insurance isn’t included in a typical homeowner’s policy which sounds to me like a dental plan being separate from health insurance. If you don’t live in a flood-prone zone, it’s likely you don’t even have flood insurance, but even if you do, coverage is limited. And as a bunch of Connecticut residents learned last August, even if you don’t live in a flood zone, you can still get flooded.
It’s kind of like when you’re living in grief and you insure that you’re taking care of yourself—by, say, relaxing on your recliner and scrolling through Facebook covered by a comfy blanket. Suddenly, one of the posts highlights the barbecue place your daughter always wanted to go to, so you quickly scroll past only to land on another post featuring the Hummingbird Café—which is the creature you’ve designated as a “sign” from her. You drop the phone and switch on the TV. There…for no apparent reason, on the big screen, is the list of episodes for the series you two used to watch together. The date of the last “watched” one was the one you watched together; the next unwatched one was a week after she died. You turn off the TV and burrow down a little further under your blanket, because what comes next is a relentless slide show of all the memories your brain can hold of you and your daughter’s life together. You’re flooded with them.
And there’s no insurance for that.
For me, I can go days without feeling that I can’t control the images that pop up in my mind and heart. Then, a simple, “Your change is $1.17” (Annie’s birthday) can unleash a torrent of them. Things I haven’t thought of in years will show up in my brain—often associated with whatever I was doing. That particular dam burst when I was picking up some vitamins and paper towels at the drugstore–I suddenly recalled going to go pick up Annie’s prescriptions after each discharge from the hospital. The girl loved her sweet treats and whenever we went, we strolled down the “seasonal” aisle and picked up mini Cadbury eggs or the Russell Stover coconut nests or the small heart boxes of three (used to be four) chocolates—whatever chocolaty goodness was featured that month.
And I know “flooding” is a thing— Angelo, my resident expert on all things psychology, says flooding is “like an overwhelming emotional demand on the ego that threatens its capacity to remain integrated.” Or put another way (for those of us who aren’t therapists…) the appearance of so many memories all at once can make us feel like we can’t keep our shit together.
If you’re a constant reader and you think to yourself, “Hmmm…this sounds familiar,” you’re right. I’ve already written a little bit about this a couple of weeks ago. The phenomenon is frequent now, possibly because the year anniversary of the date of Annie’s death is imminent. I feel like I’m both holding back and succumbing to such flooding on a daily basis. It can be extra stressful because of the external indicator of time—what month is it? What date is it? What time is it? I dodge and weave in between the external pressures and the real emotions I feel anyway, heightened by the possibility—probability–of being flooded.
The calendar says, “It’s almost April 2nd…shouldn’t you be feeling more sad right now? Getting kind of anxious?” But, what if I’m not? What if the sun is finally out after weeks of cold and gray and I’ve vaulted myself from the house after days of what could possibly be described as “hiding out.” What if I slow down my car as I drive past spring streams with my window down and listen for the peepers and smile—and maybe stop for a minute to listen. A year ago, I would have made a little recording on my phone and texted it to Annie. This year I could get hit by a wave of memories and a surge of pain, but what if I don’t? Maybe when the floods hit, I can try and soak up the images and memories and recollections that I’m kind of grateful to still have.
And you know who would have reminded me to look at it that way?
Yeah. You do.
https://cindyeastman.substack.com/p/flood-insurance
Cindy Eastman is an award-winning author whose most recent book, True Confessions of an Ambivalent Caregiver, is a memoir-in-essays published in September 2024 by She Writes Press. Cindy edited an anthology on grief, Grief Like Yours published in June 2025 from Carpe Vitam Press. She writes a weekly essay, Silver Linings, on Substack. As a presenter and facilitator, Cindy has presented nationally at the Story Circle Network Women’s Writing Conference in Austin, Texas and is scheduled to be on the faculty of the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop in March 2026. Cindy also teaches English at Naugatuck Valley Community College.
