Hey there, this is David Green. I'm going to be guest hosting In Conversation until

Shumita returns from parental leave. Before we get into today's episode, just a warning that

this episode does contain descriptions of child loss, drowning, and grief.

This is In Conversation from Apple News.

I'm David Green in for Shumi Tabassu.

Today, one family story of survival and healing after the Texas floods.

In the early morning of July 4th, 2025, Texas Monthly, editor Aaron Parsley, was at his family's home on the Guadalupe River northwest of San Antonio. He was there for the holiday weekend with his husband Patrick, his dad Clint, his sister, Alyssa, her husband, Lance, and their two small children, Rosemary and Clay.

Aaron's dad and stepmom bought the house back in 2021 as a place for the family to vacation

and to watch their grandkids grow up.

It sat on a stretch of the river that's really wide and really slow and really beautiful, lined with cypress trees.

It's idyllic.

It's beautiful.

Rain was in the forecast.

The area was flood prone, but their house was built for it.

It sat on huge concrete pillars, 20 feet off the ground, above the likely flood zone.

We know that this river floods and we thought that we were safe.

It's really, really hard to imagine the river coming out of its banks

and crawling all the way up the yard and up those pillars

and onto the deck and into the house.

But tragically, that is exactly what happened.

Around 4 a.m., the family woke up to water, rapidly rising around their home.

I remember hearing the debris hitting the house.

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