Tonight here in the Bay Areas a natural gas pipeline exploded – not sure know how it happened yet – and in an instant lives were changed forever.  An entire neighborhood was in flames within minutes.  We are used to wildfires around here, but people have time to evacuate.  This is difficult to comprehend.  People are burned, possibly dead. Homes are turned to ash.   The real horror begins tomorrow when the light of day brings the reality to our doorstep.

It makes you stop and think about gratitude, about love, about loved ones and even about material possessions.  We like to think our material possessions mean nothing, and when we have lost a loved one, material goods are meaningless.   However, to lose it all within a few minutes…   I see these houses being gutted and burned to the ground, just like that.  I look around me in my writing room and try to imagine.  It is true what they say – grab the photos.  The first things I see are photos.  The double photo frame of Al as a little boy picking up Easter eggs in the park, me sitting on a chair holding a ball and giggling at whatever the photographer was waving at me. My favorite photo of my Grandma smiling at me from her chair in our living room in Mundelein, as if she were right here.   Photos of the boys, my Mother, Al and I when we were “dating” – him with hair – a keepsake if there ever was one.   A photo of Al flying a kite at the beach.  These could never be replaced.

Then on to the other things that inspire me in this room – a miniature doll I wigged and dressed with a gown I made myself; a hand embroidered child’s shirt from Mexico that Ronnie sent when Joe was born, and next to it a photo of each boy wearing it as a toddler; a drawing of a space alien on a rocket ship with the words Take Charge that Andy drew when he was about nine years old.    A mother giraffe nuzzling her baby giraffe music box which Thais gave me when Andy was born.  Two frames in which are mounted  Barbie doll clothes my Aunt Dorothy and my Aunt Tess knitted and crocheted for me when I was a very little girl.  A cross stitch I made myself – Noah’s Ark with the phrase: PLAN AHEAD. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.  A stuffed macaw from the trip to Costa Rica with Mom in 1995.  That’s just this room.  There is 2200 square feet of things that have meaning to me.   I know most people keep stuff in their house for that reason – it means something.  It’s not “supposed” to, we all know that, but it does. 

Of course it could all be turned to ash as long as my family was safe.  Still, tonight my heart aches to think of the morning after for the people on the other side of the Bay, when loved ones are found to be safe, and the reality sinks in.  It is not a nightmare.  When the coastal fog lifts, gone forever will be the photos, the stuffed lion, the baby clothes lovingly wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a chest for when the grandchildren are born, the flowers pressed into a book from the honeymoon, the journals with memories that can hardly be retrieved. 

May they be comforted in their losses, whatever they may be – loved ones and yes, even their possessions that defined them and gave some meaning to their lives.