On December 1, 2007 my life changed dramatically. You know, one of those times when your life is going along okay, day in and day out, just cruising along and then FLIP, life takes an unforeseen turn into chaos and the unknown. It's a time where you can either look for the lesson or embrace the darkness. We all have them, although some may not be as life altering as our little flip.
Some friends of ours were having a going away party that night, as they were moving away at the end of the month. Tom and I had worked all day and had to work the next morning but felt that we needed to go and say our goodbyes to these wonderful people. My oldest son was staying the night at a friends and my youngest son who's 12 would be home alone. We would go to the party, make an appearance and be back home in about 2 hours. We went over all "At Home Alone Rules" with our son and 911 emergency procedures, what constitutes a 911 emergency, yadda, yadda, yadda. Our 12 year did the "I know, I know" thing that teen-aged kids do. Little did any of us know that he would be using those parental reminders 30 minutes after we left.
5 minutes after our arrival to the party we get a call on our cells, "This is the Colorado Springs Fire Department, you need to come back to your home, unfortunately we've had a fire. Your son is safe." FLIP
That was the longest drive I've ever had in my life. What happened? How bad is it? Are our pets okay? What do we do?
We were on our cells making calls, work, friends anybody we could think of calling. I kept telling Tom to talk to me because then I could concentrate on something other than the horrible scenarios that were running through my thoughts.
As we got closer and closer to my house, the racing of my heart and mind kept getting more intense. Outside of our neighborhood, I could see the river of muddy water running down the streets and said, "That's from our house."
We pulled into our neighborhood and saw the flashing emergency lights from about 10 fire trucks and emergency vehicles. We parked as closely as we could and ran up to our street to see all the chaos. All I wanted was to get to my son, to hold him and protect him. The tears started to flow as they lead me to him. He was wrapped in a blanket at a neighbor's house, looking so much smaller than he had looked when we left. My heart was aching for him.
I held him and tried to be strong for him. The tears however flowed slowly and I wiped them away quickly so he wouldn't see. I don't think I was successful in that. His hair smelled of smoke as I held him tightly. He was strangely calm.
Our puppies were safe, our kitties were safe, the neighbors had them. We were handed business cards of the fire crews, the investigators, the red cross, neighbors cards. They were all there watching in disbelief as we were. They all were offering whatever assistance they could offer. We were in a daze, looking upon what used to be our home.
What do you do? Who do you call? Would our lives ever be the same? Where do we go? It was all such a blur. So surreal. Over the course of the next few days, we told the story of that evening over and over again, to fire investigators, friends, family, insurance agents, red cross representatives, and even news crews. It was still surreal in every telling. I kept feeling that this was yet another nightmare and it would end soon.
I'd been having dreams about our house burning down for about 2 months and couldn't shake the gnawing premonition. So much so, that I had sat on the floor and examined every bulb, of every string of Christmas lights before using them, every bulb. But, it was real this time.
The fire had started in the garage. It burned hot and fast and had traveled up the insulation into our bedroom and up into the roof. The garage was completely gutted, our bedroom was totaled and the roof had gaping holes in it. But, we had each other. We were all safe.
My youngest son did everything right. He smelled the smoke, he saw the flames, he tried to call 911 but, the phone lines and electrical lines ran through the garage, there was no phone service. He got out and yelled for help until a neighbor came out and called 911. Smart kid.
A heroic dog loving neighbor managed to coral our puppies, not an easy task, believe me and had even suffered some smoke inhalation to do it.
Another neighbor volunteered to keep our dogs for as long as we needed, not an easy task considering they are BIG and eat A LOT.
And this brings me to the point of all of this, even though we've lost a lot of things, they are just things and pale in comparison to what we gained…a knowledge that we are truly blessed and everything that I've always believed about humanity and our world, near and far, was true. My naïve (as some have called it) belief that most people in the world are inherently good and kind. That was confirmed to me.
Our wonderful friends, our fabulous families, and perfect strangers worked together to make this far less traumatic than it should have been. And this is what I'm here to testify about.
Our closest family friend was there as soon as he could be to do whatever we needed him to do. He tracked down our oldest and drove with us to retrieve him. He offered up his apartment to us for as long as we needed and kept us from losing our minds.
The Red Cross was there immediately to offer whatever assistance we would require. They were gentle, kind and respectful as they offered us money to get whatever we might need until the insurance people could get to us. They offered a warm place to sit and told us what the next steps were.
The next day our friends came en masse to offer whatever assistance they could. They went to the house with my husband to gather what things they could, mostly clothes. They spent many hours at a local Laundromat, washing the smoke-smell out all of our clothes and were just there for us.
Still in a daze the following day, I went to the grocery store, the one I always go to as anything "normal" was what I needed. We needed, well, everything. As I walked the aisles picking up shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, underwear, socks, the basics that we never think about, I was amazed at how much we took for granted. I made my way to the check out and told the cashier that this would be a tax exempt red cross purchase. She looked at me quizzically. I told her that we were the people that were on the news, the ones whose house had burned down. We were THOSE people. This woman, whom I'd never met before formally, just seen many times in my visits to her store, came around the check stand and hugged me. She then issued me a giftcard on behalf of King Soopers. I held back my tears until I got to my car and then sobbed in sheer gratitude.
This is what life is about…gratitude… Part 2 coming soon…
