When Kathy Roussel looks down her street, she imagines the neat green lawns her neighbours were so proud of, not the cracked mud that weighs on the homes and spirits of Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish.
Like many of the devastated area's residents, Roussel cannot imagine leaving the place she, her husband and their extended family have always called home. But many, awaiting official decisions on the future of the parish, are still unsure if they will be able to return.
"I don't understand that kind of 'I'm not coming back' mentality," Roussel, 50, said tearfully as she stood outside her red brick single-story home, which flooded to the ceiling with water following Hurricane Katrina. "You don't know anything else - this is all there is."
Roussel, who drove a school bus for the parish - a local-government jurisdiction near New Orleans, turned the pages of an album with pre- and post-Katrina photos of the rooms in her house. Beside one picture of the destruction, she had written: "My kitchen, where meals were prepared daily for my family."
A mostly working-class parish five miles from downtown New Orleans, St. Bernard was home to about 67,000 people before Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, flooding the area with up to 12 feet (4 metres) of water.
Residents were allowed to return to their homes during daylight hours two weeks ago only to find them sunken with mud, moldy, and torn to pieces. It was a massive blow to the many whose St. Bernard roots go back for generations.
"Most of St. Bernard you're going to find is families," said Karen Scott, 47, who was one of the few residents visiting their homes on Sunday. "It's your fathers, your sisters, the church you went to all your life, schools you went to that your children now go to - now everyone's scattered."
While nearby New Orleans is allowing residents of some neighbourhoods to start work on their homes, the future of St. Bernard is less certain. Officials have said the parish will lack water for the foreseeable future and schools are expected to be closed for at least a year.
Residents said they are worried by rumours of plans for widespread bulldozing, but the St. Bernard government said on its Web site that no building would be demolished without its owner's permission.
Scott said she was skittish about returning to St. Bernard, but her husband Jesse - also a lifelong resident - wants to. Both had on rubber boots, gloves and surgical masks as they tried to salvage their son's video games through the front window of their home. A build-up of mud inches (cm) thick has made even getting inside the houses a challenge.
Silence hung over St. Bernard's abandoned residential subdivisions, broken only occasionally by the sound of helicopters carrying away debris. American flags on makeshift poles waved in front of two houses, one of the few signs residents had been back.
An insurance adjuster stopped to seek directions since most of the parish's street signs were lost in the storm.