But Delia “Sis” Holloway, 82, lay there dead, two months after her sister, Deborah “Bodie” Fisher, 85, had expired after she was forced to evacuate their home for safety in Texas.

The madness continues.  From writer Gary Younge in today’s Guardian:

Two months after she was first seen, Sis’s body lay decomposing in a townhouse in the business district. Mr Gaines says she died with one of her feet on the floor, as though she was trying to get out of bed. The foot had rotted from the leg. Someone had covered her body with clothes. But when Ms Martin tried to remove the clothes, Sis’s face started to come off with it. Just as downstairs bears the flood’s watermark, so the headboard shows the stain her hair made as it splayed out above her head. “She had no face,” Mr Gaines says. “The skin had shrunk right up to the bones on the body and was jet black. All the fluids had run out of her.”

This is the gruesome sequel to the story that started on these pages two months ago. Bodie is my wife’s godmother. She had decided, along with her sister, to stay put as Hurricane Katrina came barrelling over the Gulf. The house had been in the family for at least a century and had withstood all other hurricanes.

Except this one.
And again, it was the levee flooding that killed their home and neighborhood.

No, I have not forgotten.

My stepfather and his family are now in Dallas, TX in an apartment provided by a charity.  He returned and saw his former homes–but only with several other people on a bus.  The occupants were not allowed disembark and view their property at length.  He said that New Orleans is just about a ghost town, terrible and sad to look upon without screaming at the sky for the wreckage of lives, culture and communities.

My stepfather is lucky.  He had insurance on his properties, and so he is waiting for the remuneration checks to come in.  I asked him whether he wanted to return to New Orleans, and it looks as though he wants to live in Houston, where it appears many black New Orleanians are reassembling and relocating, as well as a few longtime family friends.

My aunt and cousins are another story, and I will relay what I know or can tell about their story.  At last report, my cousin said that they were planning to stay in Texas at least until hurricane season was over.  That would be in November, and November is here. I’ll see whether they will be returning to New Orleans at all.

But for other New Orleanians, it is the same old, same old story, according to the writer Gary Younge.   (Younge, btw, has been a Guardian contributor since 1994, writing from the United States, South Africa and throughout Europe on social and political issues. His book, No Place Like Home was shortlisted for the First Book Award.)

What followed was a tragic tale of callous incompetence compounded by institutional indifference, and individual kindness negated by systemic failure.

Bodie was flown in an air force plane from New Orleans to San Antonio. Somewhere along the way, says Ms Holloway, she had her bag stolen. When the family tracked her down in San Antonio, they went to see her. Ms Holloway says: “She was coherent, talkative, angry and very upset about her sister.” Her aunt looked frail and had lost a lot of weight.

Ms Holloway went to get Bodie some new clothes and her favourite Jamocha almond fudge ice cream. Shortly after she came back, she died.

“She died in San Antonio but she died because of Katrina,” Ms Holloway says. “I hope she’s counted as one of the dead.”

Not unlike musician Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, who was evacuated after witnessing the loss of all his mementoes of a lifetime in his home.  The elderly cannot absorb this kind of upheaval very well.  My stepfather is very strong-minded, but he is still in his early seventies.  Another decade, and he will require tenderness and protection, something these old women did not have at the end.

On September 17, Ms [Deborah] Holloway held a double memorial service for her mother and her aunt, presuming that her mother’s body was in St Gabriel’s morgue and would soon be released. She kept calling but nobody could help her locate the body. One volunteer said they did not know which body was in which bodybag.

More than two weeks later, Mr Gaines arrived to find Sis’s body still in the house. He called the emergency services and they finally came to take her away. This time they marked the house in yellow spray paint, right over the red.

Three days after the body was removed, the firefighters came. They were gathering information about people who had not been found by their loved ones and wanted to know what had happened to Sis.

As of Friday, her body was at St Gabriel’s, still a prisoner of the appalling bureaucracy. “They say they will not release her until they have positive identification,” Ms Holloway says. “And I can’t tell you how long that’s going to take. My mother deserved better than this. Whatever happened to dignity? Who was responsible? She can’t be the only one.”

She isn’t. We are now entering the third month since Katrina hit the Gulf States. And still…

More New Orleans stories coming soon…