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And she ran out of the house. After Spike woke up (he's a late waker-upper) he also went down to the corner after I told him. He came back and said it was "eerily like our house" because the garage is all gone, and also the kitchen. "I just walked past that house last night," he said. I haven't gone to see the house and I don't want to. I don't like hearing about houses burning down, it's not an exciting abstract event for me, it's a grim reality filled with surrealism and loss. I looked out my front window at the intact houses across the street and thought again how things change in an instant, you can turn off your computer planning to get ready for bed and instead find yourself standing in the street with a hundred other people watching your house go up in flames. Or you can wake up on a Saturday morning and make breakfast for your family, and by noon be homeless. It's hard because they are close by, they are just down the street, and adding to the surrealism that is a fire, this family I don't know just lost their house and probably most everything they own while I sat in my red leather chair studying my World Literature book and eating some chicken and pasta. My life went on oblivious to the fact that my neighbors were losing everything. And the lives of my other neighbors will also go on, and everyone will talk about the fire over dinner and then they'll watch some TV and go to bed in their houses with a roof over their head and a working heater in their garage. And that other family, that I do not know, will be spending the night somewhere else, maybe with family, maybe with friends, maybe in a hotel. And tomorrow they'll spend the day going through the rubble trying to see what is left, and what is worth trying to scrub and save. Eventually they'll find another home and people will donate furniture and clothes and food to fill it but it will be different than moving like regular people. In a way it will be like Christmas, every box they open will be a surprise, another mismatched set of dishes, some spare coffee mugs, a comfy chair that's spent the last year in someone's garage. But there won't be any memories being unpacked when they move. No baby clothes carefully packed and saved in the garage, no crib, no old books or family heirlooms or christmas decorations passed down through the generations, nothing that was stored for safekeeping, nothing that was being saved "for later", nothing that was in that garage or their kitchen now exists. It won't be unpacked ever again because it simply doesn't exist. That is the wierdest feeling ever, "Where is Spike's wooden high chair?" "Oh, it doesn't exist anymore." It doesn't exist. I got over our fire, my kids got over it, we survived and moved and moved on with our lives. But as easy as I have said it was to do that, as easy as I made it look on the outside, and as easy as I will continue to claim to people that it was, it wasn't. And it's not. And I feel for that family down the street and I'll grieve for every last memento they lost, even though they are also discovering like I did that NOTHING in their garage even matters now that their family is out and safe and alive. Because not one of those mementos do matter, but they must be grieved just the same. One of the toughest memories of the night of our fire is standing next to Spike in the street, Spike wearing only his underwear and wrapped in a blanket from a neighbor, Spike standing in the street and watching his house and everything he knew burn in the night and hearing him whisper over and over "Please make it stop... just make it stop..." The family down the street is discovering the value of life right now, and discovering how little things other than life even mean. But they will also grieve for the things that no longer exist. I don't think I can go look at their house. I don't want to remember what happened to us.
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