Hearing the news anchor say that vacationers waited a couple years after Hurricane Katrina to return to New Orleans for Mardi Gras was both sickening and uplifting.

Yesterday was Fat Tuesday. I have taken the day off work and I am lying in bed watching the morning news, something that is completely unordinary.

I have also just finished reading Anderson Cooper’s book “Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival.â€Â

Those two things combined make today̢۪s sunshine seem dreary.

A major emphasis in the Katrina section of Cooper’s book was the fear that people would eventually forget what happened in New Orleans. Victims said things like, “Mark my words, man, it’s all going to be cleaned up and forgotten.â€Â A police officer tells Cooper, “You can’t let them forget. We’re counting on you.â€Â

They don̢۪t want to be forgotten, but they know they will, or least most of them do.

I was unaware of the real horror in New Orleans and Cooper would probably agree with me when I say, the media assisted in my ignorance.

Some things are just too gruesome for TV; Cooper knew it and we know it. What we see on basic TV is screened. Reality is too real, apparently.

So where is the remembrance? Today the celebrations are alive. Cajun cooking and free beads; but what about all those dead bodies? I could be in shock, having just read Cooper̢۪s book, but shouldn̢۪t people be celebrating the rebirth of their city in relation to its near devastation?

I went to a few Web sites looking for a donation link, signatory ribbons being sold or handed out, or just simple gestures that showed people remembered the destruction. I did not put Hurricane Katrina directly into my search, because I wanted it to come up spontaneously amidst my search for the celebration.

I am glad people have started visiting New Orleans in higher numbers than before Katrina, that’s the uplifting part. I have to say though, I hope things are different in New Orleans because my search was depressing. Nothing sat on the surface of my search and said, “We remember.â€Â

It was dry – as dry as the ground where the floodwaters once sat; forgotten, like a bad dream. Things have been rebuilt and the surface is regaining its once prosperous composure. But even in his letter to the public, the mayor said nothing of the dead.

I sat there saddened, wishing I could tell that police officer, “they have not forgotten.â€Â