This is a picture of part of our hill as you drive up from the road.

Note the sign from CAL FIRE…it did not burn.

 

This was written last Sunday the 13th of October:

I don’t have any answers this week.  No tips, no tools, not even much inspiration.  And instead of offering you something, in fact, I am asking something of you instead.  It has been a long two weeks.  Ones I could have never predicted and still can’t wrap my mind around.  So today, I ask of you to be my witness as I simply tell you my story.  I can’t even think of how to make any sense of things, I merely write, as I often write, to search for the right questions.

Two weeks ago this Monday morning I woke to the news of a mass shooting.  I was terriby saddened, but then I learned it was in Las Vegas, the city my husband had gone to for work the day before.  Then I heard it was in the Mandelay Bay hotel, the exact location of my husband’s trade show.  I ran to get my phone, and during the long minutes of finding it, and then having to charge it, I prayed for his safety.  What seemed unthinkable was luckily not true for me, my husband was ok.  And after the wave of relief washed over me, I suddenly felt an immediate and intense connection to all the other people, frantically searching for someone they love, without hearing the reassuring words I was blessed to recieve, “I am safe,” to follow.  It became an intense week for our nation, as we learned of the enormity of the terrorism and brutality.  I continued to feel a strong connection to the victims and their families, as I was so lucky that my husband was not in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet was so near to being so.  A close call, but the razor thin difference between complete relief and total devastation.

And then the following Monday past, another shock.  We woke to the sound of our phone ringing, my father in law, warning us of a wildfire.  We went outside and smelled intense smoke, saw a bright red sky right beyond our hill.  We woke the rest of the house, called up to the home  behind our home, to awaken the night caregiver to prepare my mother to leave,  I threw as many photographs, memorabelia and important papers as I could into our cars.  By the time we drove up to put my mother in the car, the power was out and the area of glowing red sky was growing larger.  The winds were swirling and blowing so hard, the smoke was making it hard to breathe.  We drove down our dirt road and then down the windy mountain road to the base of our mountain.  From there we could see flames all along the hillside.  At this point we were a caravan of cars, and friends were texting their own evacuatons and informing us where to go.  We went to an evacuation center at the Santa Rosa Veterans Building, as another one had already filled up.  My mother, still in her pajamas, had only her purse, the few medications I could grab, and the clothes on her back.  She is wheelchair bound and totally dependent.  

We watched as people came in droves to the center, a menagerie joining us of people, pets, dogs, and even some rabbits.  The fear was rising as the place began to quickly fill and people shared stories and pieces of incomplete news and rumors.  The enormity of the situation was only beginning to surface.  The noise of barkng dogs was getting louder, and my mother, so very weak in her voice, could not be heard.  We made our way to our synagogue, close to the Vets building,  where we could find a place for my mother to get some food and water.  As we sat, waiting for the sun to rise, more and more people joined us, watching and counting the vast number of fires that were spreading and flaring up all around the city we loved.  

Dawn seemed like it never came, as the sky remained so very dark, filled with the thick black smoke of consumption. Eventually we could see the entire hill on which our house resides was behind that wall of thick black smoke.  A friend, awoken to the news of the blaze, beckoned us to join them in their home which was not yet in an evacuation area.  With gratitude we caravaned there.  It was such a great a relief to find shelter, and luckily it was a one story home for the wheelchair, where we could let my mother lay down.  We all gathered with our laptops and cell phones around the radio, listening for updates and news of any kind.

Fortunately, over and over the texts began coming through, with the three most beloved words you desire, “We are safe.”  As the day progressed, and the fires spread, we sat in shock and horror, glued to our phones checking in on people we loved.  Over and over again we sighed great breathes of relief as words of safety kept pouring in.

But then, as the day transitioned, unimaginable images of destruction began to surface.  An entire community at Coffey Park, just a few blocks from my husband’s business, was gone.  Mobile home parks, hotels, restuarants, and then another neighborhood on Fountaingrove Parkway, all completely destoyed and still burning.  We began to learn of ones dear to us finding out their homes were gone, they barely making it out alive.  By the afternoon we could begin to see the burned remnants of the hillside we lived on emerge.  My husband and I ventured out, and even though our road was closed, we hiked the two miles up.  We just had to know what was left.  We walked up Calistoga Road, an apocolyptic scene around us; blackened landscape, embers smoking here and there, and flames still burning on tree stumps or fence posts.  As we reached the top of our ridge, the first we saw was our row of mailboxes, strewn along the ground  completely burned.  The book I had recieved from Amazon, the one for book club, was sticking out of the flattened box, charred.  The pages discintegrated to ash when I picked it up.  We began the long trek up our dirt road, at least a quarter of a mile of self talk, reminding myself that we were safe, that things were just things. It looked like a scene from a distant planet, the views in every direction of black nothingness and charred boulders where tall willowy grass once stood.  A lone jackrabbit scampered across the desolation.  I worried that he was scared, lonely, and hungry.

As we turned the corner at the top of our road, I began to cry, as the windows of our house came into view.  It was there, a miracle, still standing with the lavendar blowing in the breeze in front of our front steps.  We ran through the house with such gratitude.  It wasn’t about the things, I realized, it was about the love.  The love in our home, the memories we shared together there, the kitchen where we cook and celebrate together, the post we marked with the heights of our growing girls, the house we built with every penny and prayer we had and filled with a family and years of first steps and first words, and so many of the big talks, important news, family meetings, and times of tears and laughter.  It was all there, the rooms of our children, the pearl necklace my grandmother gave me, and the painting my friend had created just for us.  Our sanctuary where I love to watch the sunrise from the kitchen each morning and the moon rise each night was still alive with the pulse of our family.

I looked further up the hill and was relieved to see a buidling.  But as I stepped closer, I began to realize there should have been two.  The garage of my mother’s house was there, but the home, her home where she moved to be with us in her late stage of illness was completely gone.  Ash, rubble and cinder. We walked close to it, the heat coming from it still quite intense.  I began to sob as I thought of all that my mother had lost.  Her daughter, her husband, her health and her home of 40 years when she moved to join us in CA.  She had widdled her entire life of belongings and memorabelia down to a few precious heirlooms that contained the memories of the person she was when she could walk and when she could talk. The painting from her father’s home, the sculpture from Israel when she met Eli Weisel, the Nobel Laureate, the award she had been given for her years of volunteer work, all the reminders of who she had been were suddenly gone.  Breaking the news to her was one of the hardest things I have had to do, second only to telling her that my sister had died.  She was silent.  Not the kind of silence from her lack of ability to speak, but the kind of someone retreating into their inner world to find some kind of equilibrium.  “I know this all is not ok, Mom, but please, wiggle your finger if you’re doing ok.”  Slowly her index finger began to move.  Getting her to give me a thumbs up or thumbs down was the only real communication I had with her for the rest of the week.

As we began to sit with the complexity of our emotions, the gratitude that we had been so lucky, and the grief that my mother had not, was surreal.  The sirens were still blaring, the sound of helicopters became constant as more and more fireman began to convene on our city, including the National Guard.  And slowly in the days to come, more news of loss began to accumulate.  Dear friends had been away, only to learn from afar of the complete loss of their home, with no chance to save anything at all  Their home, like second home for us, was where I had so many memories as well, of their son’s birth through the 19 years to their mother’s memorial.  How many meals and card games and holidays we had shared together there.  And then other friends, sharing the news and images when they were able to find out the status of their homes.  

I was overwhelmed with a sense of complete helplessness.  I felt paralyzed with the enormity of how many people were left with nothing of their lives, their own beloved sanctuaries.  “We are safe,” we all kept reassuring each other, until news came of the casualties.  The older couples, the middle age man, and then the teenager.  It was all too much.  And during this time, we couldn’t get any caregivers.  They had either been evacuated themselves or could not make it.  Caring for my mother was now my full time job, making sure she was getting enough fluid, getting a pharmacy to refill her medications, dressing and tending to her every need, trapped in her silence.  I barely could be in touch with my work, fortunately located one town over from the burning fires, as my hands were so full.  But I was proud of my team as I learned they were tending to many of the people evacuated from the Santa Rosa hospitals.  We were sending our Behavioral Health staff to shelters and evacuation centers.  We were offering support in the time of need.  I felt sad to be separate from all the important work.

And then I read the names of victims.  There was a couple I knew.  It had been a few years since I had seen them, but the thought of their passing, in the way that it had happened, immediately haunted me.  We are safe, I kept telling myself.  My family is safe, our closest loved ones are safe.  So many stories of close calls, near misses, and lucky breaks.  I had to focus on the positive.  And the love of the community was amazing.  The outpouring of people’s e-mails, offers of help and love really made a difference.

And now I sit, reflecting on all of this as I am flying back to California.  It became obvious I could not manage my mother’s care in our current situation without her home and any schedule of caregivers.  So much of what made it work in California was gone, she needed more than I could offer for now.  So bless my brother and sister-in-law, they opened their home, and yesterday I flew with my mother to VA.  Strange to be away from Santa Rosa, with the normalcy of life so effortlessly moving on, but so relieved to be taking her somewhere safe.  My heart is aching as I fly away from her.  When she moved out here, although it has been so very difficult these past three years, and I have been tested in my patience (sometimes lacking!), there was meaning in what I was offering her, a place to pass in the peace of her own space, as she strongly desired.  Now this was gone as well.

But life does go on, and we are resilient as human merely beings (as ee cummings once wrote).  Amazingly the blackened hills will be green again by Spring, when the rain comes, and people will begin to rebuild.  We will remember and honor the deceased as best we all can.  For now, when the plane lands, I need to focus on what I can do to help, and how I can begin to help the healing, for my family and my friends. Tomorrow I will return to work, and I look forward to running a group for kids coping with the crisis.  

And as always, in helping them I will help myself. Because in a world so full of danger – hurricanes slamming into landfall, crazed shooters aiming from on high, threats of nuclear war from careless leaders, and now, the rapid spreading savagery of wildfire, we need to all help each other cope.  I will reassure the children that being scared is normal.  That wanting to cling tightly to those we love is a healthy response.  And that being angry and irritable, distracted, and clumsy, numb and tearful are all totally normal ways to feel in times like these.  But amidst all the outer and inner chaos, we need to find some kind of comfort and care. If we can focus on our breathing, if we can hold eachother tightly, and remind ourselves that in this moment, the very moment of now, we are safe, we can feel our body’s resiliency and the blessing of the love that makes our  lives meaningful.  

If I can pull myself together and offer this little something to someone, anyone, tomorrow, for me it will be a better day.