Fear of Another Fire

 

Today while we were cleaning up, the vacuum started smoking…

 

We were all right in the room – Jason and me and a bunch of the kids.  I’d told J it wasn’t working right and so he had looked at it and was watching and listening to it as Marrissa was vacuuming the living room.  Smoke everywhere!  And STINK!  WOW!  J figures the belt is stuck and he’ll look at it again.  Nothing major; we unplugged it right away and got it outside so it could stink out there!

 

Tonight at bedtime I had three kids who were scared to go to sleep.  Matthias, who normally just lays down, takes his bottle and goes to sleep, had a really hard time settling down, even though he’d begged to be put into his bed.  Cora read stories to Marrissa and Rayna.  So sweet, but when that was done, the two of them came out of their room in tears.  Terrified!

 

Right away, I figured I knew what the cause was.  I thought, if I plug the night light in they’d be better;  a little more light.  That made it worse!  It might start a fire, they said.  I told them that it was safe, that Daddy wouldn’t have bought it if he didn’t think it was safe to have in the house.  With the night light in, and Peace & Calming Essential Oil Blend on their feet and necks, I settled them back into bed.

 

I stayed with them a bit and we talked.  We talked about how we all got out safe before.  We talked about all the doors in this house where we live now.  Marrissa was worried about being able to get Rayna out of the room if she was asleep.  I said, “Do you know how to scream? Do you know how to shake her?”  They both laughed.  I said that I slept right across the hall and could get to them in time if there was a fire.  I reminded Marrissa how brave she was in our old house when she had to run by the flames to tell me about the fire.  I told her that I knew she’d be that brave again, if needed!  We talked about how if they woke and were scared they could come sleep next to my bed.  I reminded them that Daddy had put new smoke detectors in the house so those would wake us up in time to get to safety.  They seem to have settled into sleep now.

 

School tomorrow is going to be drawing escape plans.  And I might see if the chief can come have a look at them and just chat with them again sometime this week.  Even though Jason’s a fire fighter and knows all about that, sometimes it’s important to have someone else, someone important, to come and talk to them, too.  The chief and his wife are special people that love kids and support family.  They have a special place in their hearts for their fire fighter’s kids.

 

I know we have a long road ahead of us.  It’s not just about the stuff that we lost; it’s not just about the re-building of our home.  There are some real fears and concerns in the hearts and minds of each of my children.  All of them are reacting differently to this major experience!  Kristyn cries almost instantly when something doesn’t go her way.  Cora is almost overly helpful!  Marrissa seems normal, most of the time but is protective and organizing.  Wyatt is moody and loud!  Rayna needs a lot more sleep these days.  Matthias just needs his momma, a lot.  We are remaining open and honest and we talk about the fire a lot, almost whenever they want.  We’ve made sure that each child had possessions that are only for them, and not shared with a sibling.  We have allowed them their own space.  We’ve slacked on chores to give them time to regroup.  Sit-down school has not been required to this point (but there are books on the way).

 

It’s been 4 weeks tomorrow since the terrifying night of our house fire.  I am amazed at how far we’ve come already.  Life is getting back to routine.  We have the things we need to live day to day.  I guess those are kinda the easy things, right?  It’s the hard stuff, like what happened tonight, the fears and the grief, that is going to take the time.  Well, that and the rebuilding.

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

I lost everything!

 

I sit in this house… It’s just a house (though one I’m thankful for)… It’s not my house.  My house is gone!  It’s burnt up!  WHY???  Why did I have to lose my home?  Why is the place where two of my children were born now a pile of burnt wood and ashes?  A pile of rubble waiting to be hauled away??

 

It’s not fair!

 

I sit here.  My youngest children are all asleep.  My dog is curled in the corner, settled in for the night.  I expect my husband and the older girls home from work soon.  Life goes on, just as it always did.

 

But it’s not the same.  It never will be.  I will always remember the smell, the fear, the initial indecision.  I really wonder how I sleep at night now.  I think I’m just so exhausted that sleep over powers me.  Or maybe things turned out okay, so I can trust that they will turn out okay again.

 

It’s very overwhelming to think about your whole life gone… all the memories…  all the pictures.  If you’ve lived in your house for any length of time, or kept items as you moved from house to house, your memories are stimulated by what you see around you.  I don’t have that in this house.  It’s just a house.  You could ask the owner about this carpet stain or that mark on the wall.  She could tell you the stories.  To me, they are just marks on the wall.

 

I guess I have the jammies Rayna wore as we escaped with our lives.  Same with the clothes the other children were wearing.  Every time I see Kristyn’s runners… she and I were the only ones with footwear…  What I can’t do is look at a blanket and say, “this was Matty’s when he was born” or “Wyatt, you used to wear this shirt when you were Matty’s size.”  I can’t say, “Look at this book, Kristyn, it says your first word was cat.”  Invariably, Marrissa wants to know what her first word was.  I can’t remember and I can’t go look it up!  I can’t tell her…  I can’t tell her!  I can’t tell Marrissa that she lost her first tooth on this day or that, because my calendar where I taped each tooth and made a note over the years, is gone!  It’s like a piece of their childhood is just gone, wiped away!

 

I guess the “what ifs” are hitting me tonight.  The terror of what could have been, if this or that had been different.  What if I’d stopped to grab one more thing or left the children to re-enter the building… What if more of the children had been sleeping… What if…  What if, I hadn’t done what I did do, and there had been loss of life…

 

The grief of losing your home and your belongings is very different that the grief of losing a child.  It’s much less intense, but that’s the only thing I can compare.  I am not attached to things.  I never have been.  A thing is just a thing, but to lose ALL THOSE THINGS at once, to have to start over from scratch, to have to repurchase a whole household.  It’s just overwhelming!

 

Tonight, I can’t even look forward to a new house… I just want my old one back!

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Is she reading my mind? Is she living my life?

“Funny, this.  Yesterday morning, the morning before, all these mornings, I wake to the discontent of life in my skin.  I wake to self-hatred.  To the wrestle to get it all done, the relentless anxiety that I am failing.  Always, the failing.  I yell at children, fester with bitterness, forget doctors appointments, lose library books, live selfishly, skip prayer, complain, go to bed too late, neglect cleaning the toilets.  I live tired.  Afraid.  Anxious.  Weary.  Years, I felt it in the veins, the pulsing of ruptured hopes.  Would I ever be enough, find enough, do enough? But this morning, I wake wildly wanting to live.  Physically feeling it in the veins trembling, the hard pant of the lungs, the seeing it in the steady stars, how much I really want to really live.  How I don’t want to die.” 

~~Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, chapter 2.

Still diggin',

Grief–A Candid Post

 

Once a person has experienced intense grief that grief is forever a part of your life.

 

to some degree.

 

Just when you think you’ve “gotten over it” or dealt with it for the last time, something happens and it sneaks  up and bites you from behind again.

 

The tears flow unexpectedly.

 

This week Jason and I attended a “celebration of life” for the mother of our fire chief.  Her four granddaughters sang her favorite song – Lean On Me.  It was beautiful and fun!  We cried and cried as they sang.  Her husband of almost 41 years shared about their early years together and how important their children and their grandchildren were to her (and to him).  We cried as he shared, as he tried to keep it together, as if any of us expected him to “keep it together”.

 

Jason and I have never lost a spouse, so in that we don’t understand his loss.  We have lost a baby son, and in that we understand loss.

 

hopes

and

dreams

 

This has been a tough year (2010 and early 2011) for our community, for our department, for our family.  Every time someone around us is grieving, we remember our own grief.

 

Not as intense as we once did.

 

We came home from the celebration full and tired.  Full of the love shared by our fire department family.  Full of their grief and our own.  We came home exhausted.

 

Grief is exhausting.

 

I could sleep all day.

 

And for that I am so thankful that when my grief was most intense, that God had given us two precious little girls who needed us to keep on keeping on.  Just as our fire chief’s family have little ones to help them carry on.

 

The circle of life?

 

I don’t know.  I just know that

 

once a person experiences intense grief, it is with you forever.

 

Or at least that’s what it seems like to me.

 

Unexpected grief.

 

 

Still diggin',