I’ll remember something lost and suddenly I’ll remember so much more, so much more that I have to make myself stop thinking about it all. The losses pile up in my head, one atop the other, and I have to turn my brain off.
We had a beautiful burlwood bar that a chef named Frenchie had given to me and ex-Pat as a wedding gift. One of my grandmother’s lamps cast a gentle glow in that corner, the corner where we always put the Christmas tree. The cabinet held my great grandmother’s china. I’ve actually found a few bowls intact. The drawers held pictures of me that ex-Pat had put away, and some childhood wooden alphabet and map puzzles of K’s.
The top of the bar was reserved for special things. Seashells, which I’ve found whole in the ashes, that crumble to dust at the slightest touch. Vintage things: a packet of hairpins from the Victorian era. A pearl-handled straight razor and rough shaving mug. A can of Prince Albert tobacco. Two civil war minie balls, one dug and one undug. My favorite picture of ex-Pat, taken before I met him, with baby Samoyed puppy Sam.
I start remembering more and more things and my heart starts to hurt more and more, so I have to make myself stop. My old heart is awfully tender these days. Stronger day by day, yes, but the ache is still there, even as I take steps to think about rebuilding, about moving forward.
It’s tempting just to throw up my hands and turn my back on it all. Let ex-Pat decide. But I don’t think his decisions are always in the best interest of the other stakeholders (me and K). Often, they’re just the easiest way out. And sometimes, they hurt me. I won’t stand for that anymore.
Yesterday was a tearful day. I slept badly. Had nightmares. Missed my Mother terribly. Sobbed my way back home to MKL and spent the night drinking wine and watching TV. I am better today, though still frustrated with men who say ‘do whatever you want’ in one breath and ‘but do it this way’ in the next.
I will walk my own path and carve my own trail through the ashes.
Once when we were at Ventanas, MKL became fixated on a coconut bobbing in the waves close to shore. He would sit on the deck watching it, giving me the occasional update. At one point, it washed ashore and he lost track of it so he went down to the beach to do a wellness check. Even though it was embedded in the sand that afternoon, it was back to rocking in the sea by morning, courtesy of the significant pull of the tides.
I feel much like that coconut these days, at the whimsical mercy of the tides of time and the universe, with the moon thrown in for good measure.
I’m trying to recognize what I can control. In reality, it’s not much. I can control my diet. I can control my exercise. I can control what I express as emotions, but not what I feel. I can control my sleep to a certain extent, but not my dreams.
I’m coming to recognize that I don’t know what I don’t know. While this is a true statement about almost all things, it’s currently being brought home to me about the homestead. A few days ago, I spent a good hour talking with a neighbor who’s been in real estate for ages. He and his fiancée lost their lovely historic home three doors down. He already has an arrangement with two other neighbors to have their lots cleared by entities other than the Town. It will happen faster and more efficiently. He’s got his house plans drawn up and his contractor lined up and framers coming in from Rochester and a storage unit for building supplies. He’s telling me about how much I can get for the scrap metal on my property and how the Town is just going to take that – along with some insurance money – as profit in scraping my land. Me? I’m digging through soggy ashes with a trowel whose handle comes off if I don’t hold it just so. I’m sure you see the difference.
He’s offered to answer any questions I have and that’s very kind. I don’t even know what questions to ask. It’s too late to hop on his coattails and I’m not sure I’d want to even if it wasn’t. I’m realizing it’s hard to know who to trust – except myself. The Town does not have the best interests of Original Superior at heart. They’re in it for profit, for maximizing revenue from the properties destroyed by this tragedy, most of which were not in line with their Stepford vision of a community.
The only problem with trusting just myself in this scenario is that I know nothing. And I think that’s kind of a big problem
Doomsayers are claiming it will take homeowners two to three years to rebuild. There’s a shortage of contractors, labor, and materials. Maybe they’re right. I don’t know. But I know all of this is making me irritated. To figure out how to make a rebuild work, I’m going to have to go outside my comfort zone. I can do that. It’s not what I saw myself doing right now, but here we are. And here I am.
Just a sassy coconut dancing on the crests and troughs of angry waves.
Snow is falling today, on the deck outside MKL’s house, on the ruins of my home in Superior, on the Retreat, creating a blanket of stillness tinged with blues. I watch it without much in the way of conscious thought, finding its simplicity soothing.
I met with one of the Southern Baptist team in charge of sifting through the ashes yesterday, along with his daughter. Larry and Sarah. I’m not one for organized religion but I always appreciate people who walk their faith and this man surely did. He sketched out where I wanted to focus in the sifting , what I was hoping to find, and made it clear that there were no guarantees (one thing I’ve learned all too well over the last few weeks). At some point over the next few days, I’ll get a call saying that a team is ready to hit the property and that I need to come. I’m hoping it’s not Friday, the one day I need to be down towards the Retreat.
As usual, once I got to the homestead yesterday, I started digging. I found K’s door latch and handle (at her request), certainly more vintage than it was before. It’s difficult to stop once I start digging, even though I know I’m not supposed to disturb the ashes due to the toxins supposedly mixed in with them. But we know me – I don’t usually do what I’m told. Just ask the young construction worker who had to take down a barrier to let me drive on an irrationally closed road yesterday. I would have found the sidewalk to be a completely viable alternative.
Before he left, Larry asked if he could pray with me and I agreed. It was such a comfort. I’m angry at God/Spirit/the Universe and haven’t felt much like speaking to them. Larry prayed for some peace for me and K, for love, for closure, for hope, and he sounded like he was talking to an old friend, to a father. Which I suppose he was. I wept.
I think “soothing” is the word of the day. It’s soothing being in the same room as MKL when we’re working, as long as he’s not cursing at his computer, which happens. The gentle snowfall is soothing since I don’t have to go out into it. Larry’s prayer yesterday was soothing. It’s soothing to know that A, who lost everything except her dogs, the clothes on her back, and a cannonball, has the comforting presence of her daughter for a few days. Daughters make almost everything better. Ex-Pat is in his apartment now and focused on making it homey. It’s soothing to think of him as starting to be settled.
Today, unless I’m derailed, I will hold these soothing things close and not think about the Machiavellian machinations of the town of Superior, more than broadly hinted at by the real estate developer neighbor who is rebuilding their Little House in Old Town. That’s something for another day’s me.
It’s been more than three weeks. This was probably the right time to get COVID, as it has kept me in bed feeling awful for nine days. I still don’t feel good but I’ve broken quarantine a day early, as the Texas Baptist Men are coming to the house to talk about sifting, and perhaps to sift. I’m not sure which.
I think taking to my bed like some delicate Victorian has allowed me to sit with my grief. It’s fitting that my body has felt as bad as my soul. Perhaps now they’ll both start feeling some better together.
Driving in, I am aware again of the 991. Of being, once again, a member of a club I’d never want to join. And of how almost everyone I see is going about their daily lives as if the fire had never happened. Because it didn’t happen to them. I am reminded of the King Soopers shooting in Boulder that happened just over a mile from where I’m driving, and how for most of us, it was terrible, sad, and tragic. We mourned and we said “Boulder Strong” and were kind and went on with things. But for the families of the 10 who died, and likely for the many people who were present, life didn’t go on as usual. Everything changed in those few minutes. And that’s how it is for us now, the 991.
I am about ready to go back to the Retreat. Since the fire, I’ve been afraid to be alone, which is a never-before-experienced feeling for me, so I’ve stayed at MKL’s house, that he continues to fix up for sale. That feeling is ebbing now, and I want to pass through my valley into the woods and up the mountain to my fortress of solitude. To try to find my new normal. To get strong again.
Tiny painful losses continue to come to mind. My orange Bronco wristbands that were in the top drawer of the dresser and my white mesh John Elway jersey that was under the bed. My black Boston Ballet Company T-shirt. In remembering one thing, my mind starts grasping for others. What else was in that top drawer? What had I left in that jewelry box that ex-Pat gave me decades ago? Why didn’t I retrieve that muff from the antique store in Luray before this happened? Why didn’t I try harder to find that letter from Jeff that arrived after he had died, that voice from beyond the grave?
As expected, in my dreams I am continually trying to get home, trying to see my parents. Curiously, parking has been the biggest impediment. Dreams are funny things, especially mine.
I sit in the coffee shop, working, writing, checking in with A, checking in with K, trying not to cry but only half-succeeding when I speak of the house, of my feelings, of what today may hold. Still just taking it one day at a time. That’s better than one breath at a time, one minute at a time, which was how I was taking it three weeks ago. A little voice inside me says I am stronger than I think. I am starting to believe that again.
This painting at the coffee shop feels like the fire.
When times are hard, it feels like one little thing can push you over the edge. I don’t know what I’m on the edge of. I’d like to think it’s the edge of better. But it just seems like every day, one other thing happens that makes me want to just sit on the floor and cry.
Replacing things. What an impossible concept. Of course you can go to American Furniture Warehouse and get a new recliner, a new mattress, a new floor lamp. Maybe you even needed a new mattress before yours burned to the springs in the fire. Yes, these things are replaceable. You may miss your old recliner. It fit your body after your years together. It was comfortable. It held the memory of how Dusty would come and snuggle with you when it was cold, and a mere nudge told him you needed to get up for a moment, so he would shift slightly.
You can hold onto that memory of Dusty as you settle into your new recliner, the one that’s not covered in cat and dog hair, that doesn’t sit unevenly because you only use one side of it. The physical recliner can be, will be, replaced. The rest of it, all those memories and physical energies that it held? Those will live on only in your mind.
When lockdown started waaaay back in March 2020 and none of us were leaving our houses for weeks at a time, I went on a shopping spree. Clothes I didn’t need because I wasn’t going anywhere. Books (because books are always needed – they’re my comfort purchases). Kitchen gadgets because I actually did cook more. I realized after a while that I was buying things to try to fill a hole, to try to fill the loneliness I felt during lockdown, to try to do something that made me feel normal. There was something about having things that made me feel secure and safe.
And here we are today. I lost things but they are not things that can be replaced. Perhaps some of the hundreds of books, my childhood favorites, my P.G. Wodehouse collection. Perhaps a few mugs or dishes if I could find identical ones. But much of what I left in the cozy house was one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable things. A T-shirt from the restaurant I worked in at 16. The beautiful warm coat my Mother made for me. The lovely dancing skirt my grandmother sewed for me. Hand painted plates from Germany from my great grandfather. My childhood Winnie the Pooh, half my size when I got him at age 4, who was my constant comfort and companion. (When I had bad dreams, my Mother would help me visualize walking hand in hand with him on a beach, looking for shells, to help me go back to sleep.) Things that held a place in the infinite puzzle of my heart. I left them there because that was the place that felt the most safe, the most secure, the least risky. I was wrong.
Replacements for things with strong sentimental attachments don’t work. They are just the thing, without the sentiment. I could find some vintage hollow stemmed champagne glasses, but they would not be the ones that were one of my Mother’s first grown-up purchases, that were a splurge over her post-war single woman budget, that she proudly offered to her guests the first time she entertained. That held the imprint of those tiny historical events.
I find myself looking for those kinds of things. And I’ll find some of them. I have a gift for finding things that are nearly impossible to find – not lost keys in the house, but maybe a hat that you had 30 years ago that blew off on a ferry ride and that you always wished you’d replaced. But I doubt I’ll acquire the things I find. Because I’m finding that acquisition doesn’t fill the holes. It – or the things tied to it – doesn’t make the loneliness of loss vanish.
The holes created by loss cannot really be filled. Loneliness is loss’ odd partner, the two being tied together by an invisible cord for reasons and in ways that I don’t understand yet. I’m working on unraveling that knot. Those holes though, they are there now, permanent features of the landscape of my soul. These days I see my soul looking very much like the fire-ravaged ruins of my beautiful yard. The holes will fill with snow, with rain, with mud. Some will backfill with dirt over time, untended and natural. Some will be repurposed and replanted, because why not take advantage of an existing hole to create something beautiful?
I’ve written myself into the brambles now, rambled away from whatever the point I originally had was, so I’ll just stop and sit with it all.
I started back to work last week, working remotely as I have for years. Most days are all right, though it’s hard to keep my head in the game sometimes and the Rona hasn’t helped. Thoughts about the house, about K, about recovery, about the future flit through my mind as I’m trying to focus on what pays my bills. If a thought finds a vacant mind branch on which to sit, it will do so, wrapping its tiny talons around the synapse and singing a song of distraction.
Work friends who are also social media friends know what’s happened, because obviously I haven’t been shy about expressing myself there. But only a very few direct coworkers know. I don’t want to talk about it to people who can’t relate or who don’t know me well. I have always been shy to speak, which surprises many and is a therapy session for another day. Letting colleagues know feels like it would lead to an endless repetition of emotions, and knowing me, I’d try to make THEM feel better about feeling bad for me. I just don’t need anyone feeling bad for me.
All that said, in these days of Zoom calls and Teams calls, where we have to be on camera and where our backgrounds have been curated to reflect our desired self-image, I keep looking at myself on camera and wondering why I look the same. The background isn’t an issue, as I never worked from the cozy house. I am the issue.
I am damaged from the inside out. Shouldn’t it show? Shouldn’t my face reflect the blush of ash that skimmed my cheeks as I sifted through the ruins? Shouldn’t my eyes be hollow with the cold of the hearth that will never see another home fire? Shouldn’t my lashes be stiff with the tears trapped there by asbestos dust? Shouldn’t my lips be blue with unspoken sorrow and unshouted curses?
Isn’t the toll this is taking on my soul obvious? It is to me. When I look in the mirror, I see sadness in my eyes, an absence of a light that I’m used to seeing within me, one that glows through to the world outside. Perhaps those folks on Zoom know they’re seeing that something is off but they can’t put their finger on what it is. And they’re too polite to put their fingers on me regardless.
I know this lightless landscape within me. I have walked here before, via other paths, and I know I will walk out of it. It’s what I do. The light and the laughter will return. Because it does.
While I’ve seen reports that the Marshall Fire destroyed over 1,000 homes, the first number that I saw was 991. For whatever reason, that’s the number that has stuck with me. My little home was one of 991 that this cruel and capricious fire took.
There are around 140,000 houses in Boulder County. My house was just shy of its 100th birthday. It started life as an old mining cabin, as did many of the houses in the war zone that was our neighborhood. I know I’m rehashing points I’ve written to previously. But still foremost in my mind is ‘Why?’. Why did my house have to be one of the 991?
I know as much as I can know. Where it supposedly started (though not why it was so foolishly started). What the winds were like. I’ve heard excuses from our energy company. I’ve heard justification of choices made by town and county officials. I’ve seen too many people who didn’t lose their homes wanting to use this as an example of the dangers of climate change. But I still don’t care about any of that. It doesn’t change anything. It won’t bring back what’s lost.
I think I will get to a place where if there are things that we as a community can do to help others avoid this experience, I’ll be all for it. I am not there now. It’s been almost three weeks. Forever and no time at all. It’s still raw. I’m still raw. COVID has kept me from going back to the homestead, from talking about the future rebuild, from starting to fight City Hall. I’m sitting in a little limbo, waiting for the sifting teams to contact me, waiting for the debris removal teams, waiting for a little peace.
And that something is COVID-19. Yes, so far 2022, is, for me, just banging. Coming in hot on Friday night, with a positive diagnosis on Saturday, fully vaccinated and boosted me has the Rona. I feel my symptoms are somewhere between mild and death.
I’m doing all the right things to take care of myself, so I’m sure it will be in my rear view mirror soon. Right now (perhaps as a blessing in disguise?), it has fogged my mind and taken my thoughts off of the loss of Roscoe, Dusty, and the house. I’m safe with and well cared for by MKL. My dear friend (who has lost her house and all her belongings in the fire) wonderfully brought me at-home tests, beautiful flowers, hot cocoa, and her lovely self yesterday. She came down with COVID-19 about one week after the fire; at least the virus was considerate enough to wait an extra week for me.
So, I feel bad. Just a different sort of bad than only emotionally bad. Achy. Coughy. Sniffy. Feverish. Sore throat. Headache. And grateful for the love, support, and caring that my friends have shown me. I am indeed living in interesting times.
I got a letter from Anna. (Hi, Anna – I love you.) She’s someone I think of as a real writer, as opposed to my aspirational self, because she’s taken the risk of submitting work for publication and actually getting it published. She’s faced the fear of rejection, which is paralyzing for me, and met it head on. And defeated it, though I suspect its spectral form creeps and lingers every time she hits a submit button.
Her letter was handwritten, several pages, on thick cream vellum, the sort I imagine Jane Austen using to write to her sisters when she was away. In it, she advised me to write about the now-gone house, to go through it room by room, recording the memories housed in each, the appearance, the items, the events, the plans. Recreating it through words. I love this idea. I want to hold onto all of it, every carpet fiber, every window smudge, every seashell. Anna is a wise woman.
Writing here has been a comfort, an outlet, a place to spill my feelings when I’m spilling tears onto the floor or into one of MKL’s bandanna kerchiefs. I’ve also been writing in a journal, purchased especially for the purpose of recording thoughts about the fire. It’s turquoise, the color of my spirit. I opted not to get the orange one because I’m calling it The Burn Book (yes, a tiny homage) and I thought orange would just be overkill. The color is also slightly triggering just now, and I’m not a person who really buys into triggers. But here we are.
So I will likely use The Burn Book to capture the essence of the cozy home that for so long held my heart and dreams, writing when I am in a quiet place of solace, though that’s hard to find beneath the pain these days. And I will treasure it, protecting it as one of my prized possessions, because my fear of losing journals and books to flames is more pronounced than ever.
I wake each day hoping that the ache will have eased just a hair’s breadth, hoping that the flow of words and the busyness of living will help all that’s happened and all that’s been lost find their places in the mix of cells and stardust that is me. I’m sure one of these days, that will be true.
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