Gone

Our Storage Unit After Nov 2012 Fire

I am still trying to process the devastating news I received yesterday. As you can probably guess by the photo I provided, the news involves a fire at the storage facility where we had a unit rented.

Yesterday, I was feeling all right for the first time in a very long time. Looking forward to the holidays and thinking I'd probably have enough energy this year to actually decorate "all out" (unlike last year, when who knows how close Death came to me in November/December). About 20 minutes after Hubby left for work, I got the phone call. Not having t.v. and rarely even getting online anymore, and staying home most of the time, I hadn't heard anything. Then there's this young woman on the other end of the phone line saying, "Oh. You didn't know? We had a 3 alarm fire here at the storage facility. I'm sorry to tell you your unit was completely destroyed. It's a complete loss. . . ."

Gone.

For me, it wasn't just "stuff" in there. Yeah, a lot of it was, and some of it may even have held monetary value. I had precious heirlooms stored there, for safe keeping until we could get our barn completely finished. Antique furniture, solid wood furniture, heirlooms that belonged to my great-grandparents, selected drawings of my children's early years, my box of correspondences (including a 5th b-day card to me from my great-grandmother, letters received when I was in boot camp, letters and cards from my husband fro our dating and married years), shot glass collection from around the world (bought during Hubby's various deployments), my miniature bottle collection from Italy, my Coca-Cola bottle collection from Italy, my wine (empty) bottle collection from Italy, Navy Ball memorabilia, childhood memorabilia, books (including text books, antique books, etc), my late grandmother's tea cup & saucer collection, my late great-grandmothers glassware collection, my antique typewriter, and hundreds of dollars worth of new yarn for my "yarning" projects (mostly for crocheting).

Gone.

I'm not your "classic" hoarder. The "stuff" were my memories, my link to my heritage. I have been through forest fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, snow storms, ice storms, and floods (as far as natural disasters go), but have never experienced this kind of material loss. I've had things stolen, but typically replaceable. I've "lost" things during the many moves in my lifetime, some of which was irreplaceable. As Hubby said last night while we talked about the loss, "You're not a regular hoarder. You didn't keep just worthless things, you kept memories."

Apparently, our unit was one of the closet to the hottest part of the fire. I could barely make out the skeletal remains of my antique typewriter (early 1900's), and spied my Coke bottle collection-- they weren't in a box any more!

There's all kinds of "encouraging words" people want to say, feel obligated to-- "It was just stuff," for instance.

It wasn't just stuff to me. Yes, I'm grateful it wasn't my family members getting hurt or dying. One would have to really know me to understand, and currently, I can count maybe 3 people who really get how devastating this is for me; my background is full of loss, people and "stuff." For me, the "stuff" is extremely symbolic. Losing all these particularly symbolic belongings is going to take me a while to process.

And this happens just when I think, "Okay, maybe I can start dealing with life and all the shit I've been through."

Yeah, that's Life for ya. There one moment, the next. . . gone. Whether it be a best friend who dies young, a father who's been given 3 months to live, a man who loses everything (business and home and personal belongings), a young woman murdered at her place of work, a co-worker who gets his face smashed in by a booted foot at work, a father who brushes with death by Pulmonary Embolism, a mother so overly stressed her body starts shutting down, a grandparent whose brain is eaten away by Alzheimer's. . . some of these are from my life, some are from people we know.

The more I have contemplated the events (of the past few years) in the above paragraph, my mind keeps coming back with, "Speak the truth. Don't wait to tell someone you love them, or what they mean to you. You never know when it's going to be the 'last time' and then. . . gone."

I anticipate a grieving process that's going to take me some time, and a whole lot of feelings and emotions to work through before I "bounce back" from this. I don't think it's affected the kids too much, other than they see the Darkness that has swept over me like a suffocating fog.

Guess our life is still a soccer ball-- always moving, always getting kicked and knocked around, always in the air, spinning to some goal or another.

~Cedeham~