Megan Navarro
July felt very heavy, emotionally. Everywhere I turned, there was bad news consuming my social media, news feeds, emails, text messages, you name it. It felt like I couldn’t escape.
It all started with the weekend of July 4. While many were getting together, planning their barbecues and cookouts or going to firework shows, miles down the road, tragedy struck. What should have been a fun weekend of summer camp for young children or a time for families to take the RV out along the river, fell dark very fast.
Continuous rainfall caused the Guadalupe River to rise consistently to at least 20 feet, in numbers close to double that, in areas across the Texas Hill Country. The two communities that were hit the hardest were Kerrville and Hunt, but the catastrophe did not stop there.
When reading news like that over and over again, you feel helpless. You feel this numbness at the pit of your stomach. You read the numbers of the 130-plus people whose lives were lost and the many who were missing and you just don’t know how you are going to get through the rest of your day. You look outside of your window and see it raining, but you just feel grateful, yet confused, that you are not in the worst of it.
I can’t help but continue to feel helpless for the families who were waiting for their kids to come home after camp or those who got the most upsetting call of what happened to their friends and families who just went on vacation along the river. Then, I feel guilty that I am also thankful that I was safe at home, that I wasn’t a spouse of one of the first responders who see the worst of it all on the scene, that I wasn’t a mom who was waiting so impatiently next to her phone for that call, that I wasn’t consumed with fear while watching the river rise up.
There’s been what seemed like the never-ending increasing death toll that came from the floods, breaking news of crime and fires and hearing the stories of respected community members receiving cancer diagnoses. On top of all of that, tragedy hit close to home.
My former professor at Texas State University, Kym Fox, died on July 19, after serving more than 20 years as the leader of and coordinating the journalism program and before then, she spent several years as a daily journalist, with the heart and soul of her work at the San Antonio Express-News.
She was well-known at the university and in the journalism community, so much so that to honor her legacy, a scholarship within the Journalism and Mass Communication college at Texas State was established in her name.
She was always there to push her students to be the best journalists and storytellers. While I — and I am sure other students — did not always agree with the grade that I got, I ultimately knew that Kym was looking out for my best interest. She encouraged me to get an internship and look at me now: five years later, I am still at the same paper through all of its changes and the evolving journalistic world.
In addition to that, I have received phone calls that the son of two teachers — and a well-known family in my hometown community — passed away in a tragic accident; everyone has taken to social media to continuously share the news and the Meal Train that has been set up for them. My mom went to the funeral on Friday and even though she left early to get there, what she thought was just construction traffic was actually a crowd of people lining up to find a parking spot at the church. Basically, the whole town was there. Even if you didn’t know the kid, you knew the family. You knew that you wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy; you knew that no parent should ever outlive their child.
And I got the news of the passing of a family member on my husband’s side, whom I only met a handful of times, but was always there to get everybody together for the annual Christmas party.
Being a journalist and reporter, one of the most difficult parts of the job is having to read the news. Yes, I said that. We read, interview, research, write and report on the news and, as we all know, it’s not always positive. There’s quite a bit of negativity in the news, hence the saying, “if it bleeds, it leads.”
When we sit there, researching and reading up on all of the news, it can be very emotionally overwhelming. On top of all that we may be going through in our personal lives, we have to put that aside, get up and keep doing our job, even if that means having to listen through an upsetting interview or read something that makes us angry.
So, as we get into the month of August and toward the end of summer, I just hope that there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
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Four days later after I initially wrote this column, I had the best weekend with my parents. My mom and I needed some time together — and retail therapy, of course — to get over the heartache and bad news that we’ve been seeing and hearing all around us.
Though July was a rough month, I am just grateful for what I have and who I surround myself with. I am looking forward to a brighter day.
Navarro is the executive editor for the Hays Free Press/News-Dispatch. She can be reached by emailing [email protected].
