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Just a few months before Hurricane Ike made its place in the local history books, I wrote a story for the 25th anniversary of Hurricane Alicia. Survivors recounted harrowing ordeals of wind and waves and the agonizing weeks without power that followed. It all sounds vaguely familiar now. I know Alicia left minor damage compared to Ike, but before September 2008, Alicia was the “big one” people referred to when they talked about storms. It wasn’t that it was particularly horrific, it was just the last storm to make an impression.

Hurricane Ike supplanted Hurricane Alicia, and eventually another storm will supplant Ike.

Coastal residents have short memories when it comes to storms. I used to see that forgetfulness as dangerous, feeding a tropical predisposition for complacency about weather threats. After living through and recovering from Hurricane Ike, I realize having a short-term memory is necessary for anyone who carves out a life on a barrier island. Our survival instinct naturally propels us away from threats. The only way to stay permanently in harm’s way is to “forget” the threat exists.

I don’t think Hurricane Ike’s victims will ever truly forget what we went through. The effects of that monster storm will stay with us forever. But in order to move on, we have to leave it behind. We have to make ourselves forget, every day, that Ike happened.

That’s a really ironic thing for me to suggest, since our whole point in writing Infinite Monster was to make sure Ike wasn’t forgotten. But the forgetting I’m talking about now is more philosophical than actual. It’s part of the healing process.

Maybe, now that almost two years have passed, it’s time to start forgetting.

But Hurricane Ike taught me that comparisons benefit no one.

Anyone facing loss doesn’t experience it through the filter of comparison. And being told another person’s disaster is worse than yours doesn’t help you get through your own.

Galvestonians seemed to understand instinctively that their losses were equally devastating, even if they weren’t equal in the eyes of the insurance companies. I never heard one Hurricane Ike victim tell another, “Well, you didn’t have it as bad as I did.” Of course, there were real differences in the damage and loss, and the lasting financial consequences, but Ike’s victims seemed to consider the emotional trauma as equally shared suffering.

For months after the storm, I witnessed mini reunions in the grocery store. When old friends or neighbors saw each other for the first time since coming home, tearful hugging followed. The first question was always, “How did you do?” I frequently heard someone minimize their own loss, saying something like, “I didn’t have it as bad as some people did.” If it was obvious that one person in the reunion had significantly more damage than the other, the lucky one always dismissed his own situation and turned his full attention to listening to the other person’s story. Usually, after venting about FEMA, insurance companies or the city, the person with the most damage would say something like, “But you suffered too.” It was an acknowledgment that everyone suffered. I never once heard the person with the most damage tell the other he couldn’t possibly understand because his loss was less.

Given how prone humans are to fall into the trap of comparison, it’s hard to believe that a disaster could make an entire community so selfless, even if only temporarily. That was one of Ike’s small gifts. The reprieve from comparison helped us heal. It allowed us to have a shared grief, one that everyone understood, with no need for explanation.

I try to remember how much we all benefited from a lack of comparison when I hear stories about Hurricane Katrina and I’m tempted to bitterness because Ike will never measure up compared to that larger storm. Others will compare the two, but I don’t have to. The attention given to New Orleans doesn’t change what Galveston went through. We suffered and struggled and overcame. We have a great story to tell, no matter who’s telling a similar one.

A few days after the storm, I walked down Bayou Shore Drive, taking in the devastation. Our house remained intact, but many of our neighbors’ homes had gaping holes where walls once stood. Their belongings scattered across yards, as though the houses had involuntarily coughed up their contents after Ike’s pummeling. Only one family in the neighborhood escaped damage. Their house burned down several months before the hurricane. Its replacement, only partially constructed, sat 16 feet in the air atop pilings. Ike’s winds didn’t displace one board. I felt sure that skeleton of a house represented the future for our neighborhood. All of the houses so close to English Bayou would surely be required to rebuild on pilings, I thought.

Of course, I realized it would be expensive to elevate every house. I knew from the estimates my husband and I got for our repairs how much cheaper it would be to put the house back as it was, on the ground. But we couldn’t imagine going through another Ike. We knew we would have to sacrifice in the short term, by paying more to rebuild, in order to protect ourselves in the future.

I thought city officials would feel the same way.

It would be more expensive and take longer for the city to recover if officials required people with the most flood damage to elevate. But those who did would never have to fear storm surge again, and the city would be less likely to have widespread plummeting property values and abandoned houses.

That short-term pain, long-term gain seemed like the best recovery strategy for everyone.

But city officials decided they couldn’t take the risk of losing residents who didn’t have the money to pay for elevations. They opted for the easiest short-term solution: Let people rebuild at ground level and hope the next monster storm doesn’t come along for another hundred years.

Most homeowners, anxious to get their lives back, agreed with that decision. Rebuilding at ground level seemed to be best for the whole community. But those who did are still vulnerable to the next storm.

Is that really best for them?

We’ve had a chance during the last two months to reconnect with some of the people whose lives we chronicled in the book. Seeing them in a different context – minus the piles of rubble, the agonized glances around a ruined home – helps bring us some measure of closure. The weekend we launched the book, I visited Emory Brockway. H e couldn’t come to the party, but he wanted me to see how far he and Merlinda had come since I saw him last, the weekend of Ike’s first anniversary. They had moved out of their FEMA trailer and back into their house on Bayou Homes Drive. And one of the first things he showed me, grinning from ear to ear, was the pull-down attic ladder installed in his hallway. Those who have read the book will know why that was such a source of amusement for him. I left Emory after my short visit, buoyed by his amazing resilience.

While we were able to stay in touch with almost everyone in the book, there were a few people we lost track of, including Genell Simmons. We first met Genell a few weeks after the storm. She was sitting on the curb outside the temporary tent shelter the city set up at Alamo Elementary. Her red-rimmed eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, captured in a moving photo by Jennifer Reynolds, wrung the hearts of everyone who saw the front page of The Galveston County Daily News the next day. Genell, who had outstayed her welcome with family members, had nowhere to go and Red Cross officials refused to give her a cot in the shelter because they had stopped accepting new residents. Galveston Housing Authority officials told us they found a place for her to stay, but we could never confirm that or find out what happened to her.

Earlier this week, I got an email from a man who had finished reading Infinite Monster and discovered someone he knew: Genell Simmons. He also had lost track of her and wanted to know if I could put them in touch. Genell had worked for this man and his wife years ago, and he wanted to do what he could to help her now. Of course, I couldn’t help. I had no idea where she was. But spurred on by her desperate situation after the storm, the reader didn’t give up. Yesterday he emailed me back to tell me he had found her and his wife had already gone to pay a visit.

I love knowing Infinite Monster helped make that reunion possible. And I can only hope that Genell’s friends can be a comfort to her while she still struggles to recover from Hurricane Ike’s trauma.

As the storm’s second anniversary approaches, Genell’s story reminds me that Infinite Monster is about people. The hurricane just set the scene for the human drama to unfold.