By Emily Cox

On any other Friday at lunchtime, Cindy Hays and her two young sons, Tyler and Owen, would have been at home watching cartoons and waiting on her husband, Troy, to come home for lunch. But on April 10, 2009, Cindy and the boys, Tyler and Owen, were visiting grandparents in West Tennessee and Troy was eating out with a co-worker.

Though there is no perfect time for a tornado to rip through people’s lives, the timing of the Good Friday tornado had the Hays family placed safely away from the home that became nature’s battle zone.

While at work, Troy received a call from a neighbor telling him that his house was damaged and he needed to come home.

“I was in shock. It looked like a bomb had gone off,” he recalled.

Though a bowl of fruit sat on the table and the TV remote was still safely on the arm of the recliner as though nothing had happened, the rest of the home showed otherwise. Most of the roof had been ripped away, some of the windows and walls were missing, the line of tall pine trees that acted as a shelter for the yard was gone, and the boys’swing set was nowhere to be found.

Cindy watched the news from West Tennessee and waited a few days before returning to the mess.

“I was overwhelmed by the help the community gave,” Troy says

The house was totaled so the family moved into an apartment to wait until a new house could be built. Though given the opportunity to create an entirely different place to live, the floor plan the Hays family chose had similarities to their original home.

Life pauses for nothing, not even an earth-shattering event like this one, Troy said. His family will always remember that their son Tyler’s first year at school was begun while the family was rebuilding their home. They moved in last November.

“We were able to save a lot of our pictures. The most valuable thing we lost was time,” she said.

Though the Hays family was forced to part with certain things after having many of their belongings packed in boxes during their wait for a new home, the family realized what was important.

“You really learn what you can live with and what you can’t live without,” Cindy said.