This is Post #4 in the Journey to Truth Series
November 23, 2023
Looking back on the day of the fire, I can see it as a turning point. It was like the person I had been up to that point died that day. Singed to ashes in the fire. She would rise. One day she would rise up from the ashes.
But not before being consumed by the flames…
February 3, 2020:
In the days immediately following the fire, my husband and I sifted through every item that had made the first pass. While I knelt on the near frozen concrete, scrubbing soot from furniture, my husband went through our personal items, one by one, placing the salvageable and maybe salvageable items in blue plastic storage bins, to be gone through at a later date.
Twenty days after the fire, we moved into our new home. Twenty Days. It is hard not to think about the missed deadlines our builder promised us. Very hard.
While my husband is in Las Vegas for Super Bowl, I go into Beast Mode, working tirelessly (and ignoring my very necessary self-care habits) to shape our new home—the one I had put my heart and my soul and every scrap of creative energy I could muster…and then some—into something warm and inviting. A place to relax and forget about recent events. A place to heal from all that hurts inside. I soldier through bin after bin of smoky belongings, including our most personal, sentimental items.
And still I do not cry.
But today, at one o’clock in the afternoon, I crawl into bed. Pull the covers up over my head. Clutch my sides. And cry.
The intensity of my tears nearly rips me in half. I wonder if the sobs are just about the fire. But I suspect they are not. They feel much bigger than that. Much more important than that. I stay that way, curled into myself, until my husband comes home the following day. And then I dry my tears, paste on what I hope will pass as my happy face, and greet him.
And for the next week, when he is not home, I cry some more. I cry and cry and cry. And when I am not crying, I walk around in a fog. I am not ungrateful for all I have.
I just do not feel anything but sadness.
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