I grew up in Mayfield. After tornado, memories are all many of us have left.

“Mayfield More than a Memory,” says a mural on the wall of a downtown building that somehow survived Friday night’s tornado. The storm’s fury destroyed or heavily damaged much of my hometown and killed at least eight people there.

Memories are all many in Mayfield, population 10,000, have left.

My wife, Melinda, and I retired in Arlington, her Carlisle County hometown, a year ago. We stayed away from Mayfield Saturday, not wishing to join the inevitable crowd of gawkers who show up after disasters and get in the way of first responders.

A joint First Christian-First Presbyterian communion service brought us back Sunday morning. The twister collapsed the First Christian sanctuary and leveled most of First Presbyterian, the church of my youth, where Melinda is an active member.

About 75 members of both congregations met in the parking lot between the churches. “I think God has a calling for us, and we will see where it takes us,” suggested Milton West, First Christian pastor, who led the worship.

The Jackson Purchase has felt the wrath of tornadoes, but evidently none were as devastating as this one. Apparently, the worst tornado to hit the region had been a May storm that ripped apart Bardwell, the Carlisle County seat, in 1917.

“We, of the town of Bardwell, had never even contemplated the idea that we might someday be visited by one of these frightful, ghastly storms,” local historian Ran Graves wrote in his county history book.

Doubtless most Mayfield residents were thinking likewise Friday night.

Evidently the tornado missed our old neighborhood in south Mayfield. But we were stunned at the horrific destruction we saw around the court square and its environs. Smashed buildings, overturned cars, downed power lines, broken and twisted trees and utility poles and shards of shattered glass were everywhere. Grimy and tattered Christmas decorations were scattered in the ruins.

The 1880s-vintage, two-story, red brick courthouse was missing most of its second floor, and its landmark cupola and clock.

I unashamedly wept at the ragged pile of bricks, broken stone ornamentation and splintered wood where the Presbyterian Church had stood since turn-of-the century times. A metal state historical marker commemorating the church’s trio of congressmen —Lucian Anderson and brothers Voris and Noble Gregory — lay flat and split in two next to the sidewalk.

I thought of the message on the mural, which includes a painting of the courthouse in its heyday. I remembered the church’s big Resurrection window, the pride of generations of local Presbyterians.

On Easter Sunday, the whole congregation would turn around, face the sunlight streaming through those wonderful panes of lead-bound stained glass and sing “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”

I was baptized as an infant in the church. So were our son, Berry IV, my mother and two uncles.

Stained glass memorial windows decorated the back and both sides of the sanctuary. When we were kids, my brother, Tim, and I wondered about the names on them.

“Jno” looked like the first name of a guy named Stark. We’d never heard of anybody named “Jno,” clueless that it was short for “Jonathan.”

A window on the west side memorialized James W. Hocker. We thought that was an odd surname.

In 1978, I married his great-niece, Melinda Anne Hocker, in whose late 19th-century family homeplace we live.

Melinda was reared Southern Baptist in Arlington but returned to her Presbyterian roots in Mayfield.

My parents, Sue Vest and Berry Craig Jr., were wed in the church on Sept. 20, 1947. We treasure photos of them walking down the front steps as brand-new husband-and-wife.

They wanted their funerals in the church, where they taught Sunday school. We carried the caskets down the same steps.

As best we could tell, at least some of the Hocker window may have survived the fall of the roof and walls, which buried the sanctuary in debris.

“After the tornado, the town of Bardwell recovered rapidly and completely,” Graves also wrote in his Carlisle County history book. I imagine “rapidly” and “completely” meant relatively.

“Most of the people collected their insurance and rebuilt,” he added. Mayfield is in for months of rebuilding.

Insurance covers the loss of a structure and its contents. But it can’t replace the loss of the irreplaceable.

Unknown is the fate of First Presbyterian’s framed “roll of honor” that lists church members who went off to World War II, including my two uncles. It might have made it; the document was in the Christian Education Building, some of which outlasted the storm.

The tornado caved in the sanctuary at First Methodist Church. The congregation, said the pastor, has lost a building, but “WE are the church. You. Your family. Your friends and your neighbors who call Mayfield First ‘home.’”

I have no doubt the sentiment is the same at other churches and all across my hometown. Mayfield has lost many buildings. But the town is the family, friends and neighbors who call Mayfield “home.”

A Mayfield native, Berry Craig is a journalist, historian and author who now lives in Arlington.