Where there is smoke....There is hope

Last year, just weeks before Christmas, our home caught fire. Giant fire. Nothing we did or anyone else caused this.  No act of God. No arson or silly mistake. It just was. The loss was nothing like any other loss I have ever experienced.

Death, even the most tragic of incidents I have experienced, are a part of life.  Everyone dies, even when you are not ready for it or it makes no sense. You can't always prepare, but deep down you know it is coming for us all.

Hurricanes?  I am a master of prepping for these. Grab what you can. Protect the rest the best you can. Get out and wait. I have never lost more than pieces and parts of my home to these so maybe the full weight of their power and devastation are lost on me. You can prepare away, but deep down you know that the chances of a catastrophic direct hit are not that great when you weigh out the odds over all hurricanes we might see.

I am not trying to make light of these and other catastrophes at all. I am guessing what occurred for us is probably like anyone else who has lost everything in the fires in CA recently, tornadoes along Tornado Alley, or even the devastation from any of the hurricanes that have wiped out all one has owned.  But this was different because it happened to us.

There is so much gravity to things when they actually happen to you.  You can have empathy, sympathy for what you see on the news and a greater pull to what you see happen to folks you actually know. But when the same thing happens to you it is a whole new ball game! A grief so strong that it is impossible to explain. You have no idea what you need, how to move forward, or where to turn.  You just simply exist in a new way grappling with the various phases of grief that swim through you, ebbing and flowing with no rhyme or reason.

So we existed.  One foot in front of the other when required.  Stunned.  Shaken.  Angry. Saddened.  We each sat transfixed in our own brains repeatedly replaying the things that we could have done to cause this horrible terrible moment.  Did I do this? OR not do that? We both felt sure that this fire must have been something we had done to cause such an event to take everything we had from under our control.

But.  We were wrong. Sometimes, like in our case, bad things just happen. And while we will never truly know the exact cause of our house fire, there are theories from the inspectors that involve nothing we could have known or prevented, we do know so much more about who we are and the lives we have lived and want to continue to lead.

We know that no matter what tragedy befalls us, we will never be alone.  We will never be homeless, and we will never want for love, support, and the basic necessities of life. We know the true value of each of our friends and family members and how very lucky we are to have the support system that surrounds us. We lost so much, materialistically, and in the moments following those first weeks, emotionally and mentally.  But what we gained just can't be quantitatively assessed really.

Every day there was something; something good.  At first, while we could see and appreciate it, we were so numb and lost that the goodness, the greatness, would float on the surface of the mounting grief like oil atop water. But the enormity of the good, the love and positivity in our lives was too powerful to simply float. It slowly began to displace the bad- fear, anger, grief, enormity of loss. There began to be hope.

This hope was manifested in the people we are blessed to have in our lives; people whom we have somehow been able to weave into the very fabric of who we are and who we strive to be. They came and kept coming to support us through the numbness, the tears, the anger, and all the dirty, ashy mess.  They listened. They hugged. They provided smiles and strength when we did not have our own. They each helped in whatever capacity they could with the time that they had and no matter how big or small they may think their commitment to support us was, I can tell you that there is no way that I can put a quantitative value on any one person.  The quality of the community, near and far, that we have built around us is how that hope was manifested and how we found our way back to who we strive to be every single day- a positive, forward looking, supportive, and fun-loving team.

We lost the stuff in our life. What we found was something we knew we had, our people. But maybe we just did not realize the enormity of the role of these people in our life. Maybe we did not realize the enormity of the role we have played in their lives. I am not totally sure. But I can tell you that I now know what I always had hoped. Somehow I have managed to surround myself with some of the most amazing people on this planet.  Somehow we have managed to create a life where those we value in turn value us and there is nothing transactional about it.  We love, grieve, support, and celebrate each other. And I would not want it any other way.  

Thank you for giving us the greatest gifts of all, dear friends and family!  Words are just not enough to adequately share the overwhelming love I have for each of you.

                                                Photo by Tobias Rademacher on Unsplash