It's a Friday morning earlier this month and Susej Thompson is parked in front of what's left of her home in Little Rock's Walnut Valley neighborhood. The four-bedroom brick house that Thompson bought about 10 years ago was destroyed in the deadly March 31 storms that hit central Arkansas and Wynne.
I'm on the phone with Thompson as she describes the damage. Every window is gone, she says, as is most of the roof. The garage, where many of her family mementos were stored, was obliterated. Almost all of her furniture and other belongings were ruined.
"It looks like pain," she says. "At the same time it looks like new beginnings. In my prayer time, I've been thinking of how it looks like an empty tomb."
Thompson is a 47-year-old mother of five -- Jared, 24; Ana, 22; Stephen, 19; Titus, 18 and Jacob, 16 -- and is the music director at Our Lady of the Holy Souls Catholic Church.
Her three youngest sons still live at home, but no one was there when the tornado hit. The family's two 8-month-old Yorkies were in the house, however. Thompson found one inside when she finally made it to her neighborhood from Holy Souls after the storm; the other was found later down the street.
The tornado wasn't the only challenge she has recently faced. Earlier in March, Thompson suffered an eye stroke that left her almost blind in her right eye.
A few days after the storm she and her sons moved into a house donated to them for three months by an alumnus of Catholic High School for Boys.
"People have carried us this whole way. They just came running," says Thompson, whose ex-husband died in 2013. "But some of my neighbors are still in hotels. There is still so much work to do."
Thompson has turned to her music and writing to sort through the trauma of the storm and the constant stress of its aftermath. She posts "tornado diaries" on her Facebook page and shares songs on her Facebook music page.
"Trying to articulate how everything in your life has been turned into chaos is hard," she says. "I've been trying to write about it and process all the lessons we're learning."
And while this Mother's Day may be different for the Thompsons and other families impacted by the storms, she and her kids will certainly celebrate.
"They are fantastic about making Mother's Day special for me. I'm sure there won't be anything major. I'll do music for the church and then we will probably go out for dinner. We have family night every Sunday, and that has stayed consistent through all of this."
She's not sure what will happen next, but she's not planning to move back to her old neighborhood.
"My youngest son told me: 'You know, Mom, that house was not our home. Our family is our home.'"
email: sclancy@adgnewsroom.com