The day after the flood, Diana Sanders walked along Jordan Creek, picking up the pieces of her life.
A teal piece of siding here. Some clothing there. Her Bible was untouched, but most everything she owned was destroyed — and her husband, Bill, was killed — when the historic flooding struck West Virginia last month. Jordan Creek in northern Kanawha County was one of the hardest-hit areas.
Reporters descended on Elkview and recorded her, but Diana Sanders isn't the type to cry in front of other people.
“If I'm ready to cry, I'll take off somewhere,” she said last week. “You're not going to see it.”
The Sanders' house, camper and garden used to sit in a row next to homes belonging to other members of Sanders' family.
Those family members' houses are still standing. Diana watched a video on Facebook of the flood waters carrying her own house away.
She watched it over and over again, trying to catch a glimpse of her husband.
Recently, she sat at the dining room table with her daughter, Donna Chestnut, and 17-year-old granddaughter, Tiffany. They smiled and laughed at the memories. But their eyes were pained when they talked about how he died.
Diana Sanders looked a little sheepish when she says where she met her husband.
“At a bar,” she says. “You might not want to put that.”
He was wearing blue jeans, cuffed at the bottom, a white T-shirt and work boots, like he always did. Diana told Bill's cousin that she thought he was cute, so the cousin went over and told him so.
“Thirty-seven years,” she said. “I think it worked.”
They weren't tired of each other at all, she said. They went camping together. They worked in the garden together. They did everything together.
“He was my best friend,” Diana said.
He loved his family — especially picking on them. He loved sitting on his porch and admiring his garden.
“He loved the outdoors,” Donna said.
“And the outdoors is what took him, too,” Tiffany added.
Diana raised Donna and her brother, Bill Sanders Jr., as her own, but Bill was raising his kids as a single dad before he met Diana.
“He was always the guy I would call when I needed advice for anything,” Donna said of her father. “He would always be there.”
She apologized as she started to break down.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “He always took care of us, even when he was a single dad. He never gave up on us. He was always there when we needed him. He always made sure we had everything we needed to get by with. It's just hard.”
She paused, and collected herself.
“But he had great friends,” she said. “He had a lot of great people that cared for him, and he was loved.”
Tiffany said she had been looking forward to going on a camping trip with him.
“When we went to see him, I told him this was not how I wanted to see him this summer,” she said.
Bill Sanders worked as a carpenter for years, and then for the town of Clendenin.
In his retirement, he had trouble with anxiety. It worsened when his wife went to work, and he was home alone. His four dogs — especially Katie, the little one — helped him stay calm.
Some people told Diana Sanders that her husband was swept away as he attempted to unchain his dogs. She said if the floodwaters rose so quickly, no one can be sure how his last moments were spent.
“Nobody knows but Bill,” she said. “He knows, and I've got a feeling Katie knows. But I can't get her to talk to me.”
Diana Sanders usually left at 2 p.m. to go to work at CAMC. The day of the flood, she had made vegetable soup, and brought some down the road to her mother-in-law.
On her way back past her own house, she stopped in front, and Bill walked over to say goodbye. She warned him about the weather forecast, and the dogs.
“I said, 'If you see the water start getting up, you get Katie and Mary Jane and put them in the truck. Untie Moe and Dud, they can hit the hill. And get out of here.'
“And I said, 'Please don't wash away because I think I'd miss you.'”
“Well, if I do, I'll hold onto a log until you find me,” he said.
She said, “Well, take your cell phone and call me so I'll know where you're at.”
He said, “Well if I'm holding onto a log, how am I supposed to call you?”
“Then we kissed,” Diana said. “We told each other we loved each other, and I said, 'Well, I'll see you tonight.'”
Hours after the flood, Diana was driving down the road, when she heard a bark coming from the side of the road.
She doesn't know how long it would have taken to find the body if not for Katie. She found the little dog perched on a pile of debris, not far away from where the body was found.
A woman had told Diana that her husband was all right. Later, some of Bill's friends told her the woman was wrong.
They wouldn't let her near the body.
She broke down when she found out, until she heard Donna and Tiffany screaming on the other end of the phone.
“I'm a wreck,” she said. “I keep a brave face because of these two. But when I'm by myself ...”
Katie knew who it was when they brought the box home.
“She just stood there and put her paws up on the bottom of the fireplace — just whining,” Diana said.
Since her house was swept away, she's been staying at Donna's house in Belle. She sleeps in a back room, where Bill's ashes sit in a box on the mantle.
She talks to him sometimes. She tells him good morning and goodnight.
“I talk to him on and off when I go back through there,” she said. “Same old Bill. He don't answer.”
Recently, she went back to Jordan Creek with her daughter and granddaughter. She stood on the side of the road and looked across the barely-trickling water, to where her house once stood.
Not much remained. A single canny flower still bloomed. A single chicken — there used to be seven — came down off the hillside. A row of cornstalks lay on their side.
“It bothers me, but I'm strong,” Diana said. She then whispered, “for my babies.”
She wants to rebuild in the same location.
“I had 37 years right here with that man,” she said. “I ain't going nowhere.”
She admits that she is a little angry with him, though.
“He should have got away,” she says with frustration.
Her eyes are misty for a split second, then she slaps a reporter's arm, and laughs it off.
“You're not going to make me cry,” she said.
When she heard reports of looting in the area not long after the flood, Diana slept in her truck one night near where her house used to be.
She was reclining in the seat, half asleep, when out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw him walking up the road. He was wearing the same clothes he wore the day of the flood, and he turned toward where the house once stood.
“I just looked at him,” she said, “and I said, 'I knew, baby, you wasn't too far off.'”
Reach Erin Beck at erin.beck@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5163, Facebook.com/erinbeckwv, or follow @erinbeckwv on Twitter.