Ashes To Ashes - Part 1

Rubble Rousing

We have all that we need. Clothed. Fed. Warm. But some days are just better than others. My wife and I are discovering who we are when we mourn. A word, a phrase, a memory prodded into presence, all of these things can trigger my sadness response. The same happens to my wife. But different triggers elicit different responses for us. Sometimes I cry, sometimes she cries. If we are together, we hold, we squeeze, as if by blending into our oneness we can find reason, comfort, hope. Maybe we can find these things, but in the end our hearts find love.

Sixteen days after our world was flamed into a new reality, we return to the present state of our old world.

“We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

We witness the stark reality of a head-on collision between human futility and nature’s unmatched superiority. The mighty coast live oak which reigned over our home’s landscape was so vast and far reaching that we supported its massive branches and ponderous trunk with cables anchored to steel posts to bolster its majesty. We lived with a man-made sense of security that the cable system would work with the tree to keep us safe from disaster.

But nothing in man’s limited power can withstand 100 mile-per-hour winds whipping flames into such a fury that the ensuing firestorm renders all resistance futile. The mighty oak bent the knee of submission to the dominant wind and flames. Branches, strung together in unison, anchored to sunken steel posts, snapped. The ponderous trunk, with its massive girth, snapped. The very event we feared could happen, happened.

The full, unfettered force of a falling tree had to have been an awesome and fearful event to watch. Like showing up to the aftermath of a crime scene, I can only guess how the sequence of events unfolded. The two dominant perpetrators of unprecedented destruction, wind and fire, penetrated the interior of the house. Everything inside, structural features and civilized niceties became fuel for the all consuming fire. Wood, drywall, paint, and glue had no chance of survival against the onslaught of nature’s power.

The mighty oak, which had seen so many years of wind and rain, was no match for the deadly duo of wind and fire. From our vantage point on the ground sixteen days later, we can deduce a sequence of events based on the striation of destruction. Everything belonging to the interior of the house has been coalesced into a melted amalgam of disjointed pieces of something mixed with ash. The concrete ceiling of the master bedroom, which also served as our upper story deck, lies in cracked pieces on top of the mound. The charred, blackened limbs of the tree lie on top of the concrete. Oddly, the branches, limbs, and stems, denuded of all leaves, are all coated with black soot, but remain whole, not splintered. Is it possible that the falling tree broke the concrete?

Giving the scene a quick overview, there seems to be an order to the destruction. Mounds of ash are covered by destroyed walls, covered by fallen ceiling and roof, with the dismembered tree limbs stretching the length of the house. The brick fireplace and chimney broke the fall of the falling limbs, but the brick itself could not withstand the full brunt of falling oak. The tree limb has come to rest in the hollow it created in the broken fireplace. Ironically, the burning oak acted as its own funeral pyre, bringing on its own demise as the trunk, weakened by flames and wind, could no longer support its own weight, crashing down on the heap below it.

As I survey the remnants of what used to be our bedroom with the remains of the tree sprawled across, I can’t help but imagine the awesome violence of the destruction. Did anyone hear the terrible sound the tree made when it crashed to its death? Did anyone hear the natural gas explosion that blew ceramic shards 100 yards away?

It’s quiet, still, and calm as my wife and I happen upon the site. We’ve protected ourselves with respirators, goggles, Tyvek coveralls, booties, and heavy leather gloves as we enter the fray of ashen remains with Hazmat focus. Our house, our home, our refuge, our sanctuary is now toxic to our sensibilities. We each have a three-foot by four-foot sheet of plywood to stand on in order to protect our feet from stray nails and sharp glass and twisted metal that has now lost its intended purpose.

With no walls, floors, or any other architectural marker to use as reference to space and time, we make visible the invisible with our imaginations, trying to determine what the heaps of rubble looked like when they were standing upright. The remnants of 14’ walls still standing, when pushed by a single finger, wobble precariously. The pieces of shattered ceiling, walls, and floors are too heavy to lift, so we search for precious remnants in the most open areas.

I make my way to what used to be our library area. The back wall featured built-in spotlit shelving for books, curios, and other memorabilia. There is no more wall, just a wide open view of the carcass of our neighbor’s house on the hill above us. I’m saddened by the sight of the burnt out shell of her house, but I marvel at the blueness of the sky clearly visible behind the silhouette of the ruins.

As I ponder this previously impossible view, something else has caught my eye. It’s funny how we can imagine fragility, lightness, delicateness, simply by staring at the fine, thin details of an object. As I stare at the ash covered pile at my feet, I realize there is definition of form within the gray and white. I reach for the form and with zero resistance it takes me a moment to realize I have heavy handed the fluffy, stacked incinerated remains of a book. Like a dandelion in the wind, the imperceptible lightness of the pages disintegrate upon my touch. And as the now disappearing book becomes one with the earth, I notice that the gray pages had no more words, no letters, no hint or shadow of ink.

Incinerated books are not my goal, as I paw at the pile of ash. My fingers reach something solid and like a mind’s eye game, I try to determine what it is I’m feeling. As I unearth the two-week-old relic, I see that it’s a souvenir mug, whole and intact. Reaching back into the ash heap I’m able to find another mug. Reconstructing the house in my imagination, I don’t understand how these mugs made their way into the library, intact, from another part of the house, from another floor. Looking up, trying to figure out this puzzle of space travel, I notice a bathtub within a few feet of where I am standing. Everything from the floor above has come to rest in the library below.

Inspired by the success of finding two mugs, I continue searching for resurrected memories. My wife has found her own treasures, unearthing unshattered, scorched vases and more clay pottery. We have determined that everything slid downhill so what we thought was spatially separated by feet has now been brought within inches of closeness. With this thought in mind, I dig at the base of a wall fragment. Close to the surface I find a tiny clay bowl, fired decades ago by young hands. More digging, more success as I unearth the remaining bowls of the four-piece set. Amazingly, all are intact, with only the glaze now a new shade and rough texture.

We left our house that day as triumphant as archaeologists discovering a past, once thought lost, but now brought back to life. We will continue to sift through the ashes, trying to reclaim memories, perhaps finding more surprises, perhaps not. My wife and I will continue to move forward because the future brings us hope. We will continue to have our moments of intrinsically joined joy and despair. We will continue to teeter between the tenuous path of emotion that we find ourselves on.

I once heard it said that the three thieves of joy in life are regret of the past, ingratitude of the present, and fear of the future. At any time during the day, Andrea and I may fall victim to one or all of these thieves. For us, our reality is an ever-changing present and it is this change that brings us hope. For Andrea and I we did not choose this path we are on but we can choose to live in the ever changing present, together, as one.

Our present temporary home - Echo Park Lake - Los Angeles, CA

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