Touchstones + Anchors

Losing a life, a beloved, someone you cherish is the most excruciating loss. A friend’s wonderful, brilliantly healthy husband just died abruptly, unexpectedly. I cannot imagine her pain right now. Cannot.

It’s almost too much. I am just clinging to that which I always cling around these unfathomables: the miraculous ways that our hearts somehow survive. Somehow.

Being diagnosed with a serious illness. I have several dear friends navigating these treacherous waters right now. Again, the unfathomables.

Losing a house is nowhere near those orbits. And it is these kinds of loss, of course, that people are referring to when they say to me and my fellow fire victims, chanting almost as if in unison since it’s heard over and over by us all:

 It’s just stuff.

It’s only things.

 You are alive. Stella is alive.

And it’s absolutely true.

We all know physical things do not a human beloved make.

Physical things do not good health make.

I also don’t think any of us who lost our homes in fires were really attached to all the things in our houses.

I was a little relieved to lose things I didn’t madly love that I often wished I could replace.

Truth be told, at some point in those first couple days woven into the intense grief was an exhilaration of having it gone.

Through this journey I have often thought of myself jumping off a cliff into an unknown paradise. The first time I had that image was soon after I found out the house went down. I was nearly strangled by pain AND also feeling a strange freedom - in the same moment.

It continues today.

Yet there are some things — even the most ridiculously flawed things I owned like my Cuisinart food processor that my mom bought me over 30 years ago that I loved, knew, understood — that were touchstones that comforted my heart every time I used them or glanced upon them.

And I continue to grieve anew things I had forgotten about, or that simply can never be replaced: my entire physical history with my father, grandmothers, dear friends I have lost. I had a note that my dear Annie Fannie wrote me a couple days before she died, a tiny handwritten note that encapsulated why she loved me and why I loved her.

When you lose a home full of nearly life-long touchstones it’s like the gods pick up the house, shake all of them to the ground in an unnerving clatter, and then set the house back down to burn.

Those of us who lost houses have a common thing that happens which can be very jarring. We distinguish the clang of each singular touchstone in the oddest moments.

Someone can mention a word, a movie or a thing in their own house and in that moment it’s like I’m shoved into a supernatural pneumatic tube – shot down into my pre-fire body standing in my pre-fire house in front of a pre-fire thing that meant something to me, with whom I had a physical and emotional history.

In this supernatural memory moment, the rest of the house is gone on every other side of me. It’s just pre-fire me and the pre-fire thing:

You!

Oh, how I loved you.

So sorry I forgot you until this moment. I didn’t mean to abandon you.

But now you are fully remembered and back in my heart and brain.

Thank you for being you and bringing me the comfort and joy you brought me.

I recently heard someone talking about I Love Lucy and I was instantly pneumatic-tubed to my kitchen.  Not the full kitchen, just that little corner where the Vitameatavegamin poster was hanging. I can’t tell you how much joy that poster brought me. It made me smile inside every time I saw it.

Will I get another one for the new house?  Very unlikely. 

I have no idea what I will want to put in my house. I have to wait until it’s born, like waiting to name a baby until it comes out.

I don’t even know if I will make another giant heart. Also unlikely.

That heart brought me so much joy.  The colors, the textures, the history, the memories. Annie Fannie was there the day I started it.  She helped me paint it with her hair up in a high ponytail, bursting into song every roughly 20 minutes.  She was battling cancer at the time, and it was heroic enough that she had driven across town (to “Alaska” she would say, because Altadena felt that far from Santa Monica), let alone working with me on it all day long.

That heart was a touchstone. Yet it was a touchstone for pre-fire me.

I’m getting to know post-fire Bridget.

I looked up Merriam Webster’s definition of the word touchstone:

1 : a fundamental or quintessential part or feature

2: a test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of a thing

3: a black siliceous stone related to flint that is used to test the purity of gold and formerly silver by the streak left on the stone when rubbed by the metal

That last one makes me think of our hearts painted with gold and silver, delicate and bold brush strokes, bejeweled with gems tiny and huge, embedded by the millions and billions of people, places and things that have touched us and made us who we are.

My home was a fundamental, quintessential anchor in my life, filled with thousands of little touchstones that made it my anchor.

The visual cues are gone, but my heart remains shimmering and bejeweled.

Still, if you come upon someone who lost a house, you might steer clear of reminding them that “it’s just things.”  Grieving is a windy, jumbly, circuitous, two-steps-forward-three-steps-back road. 

Many stops on the road to recovery from losing a house may appear superficial. Yet, most things are not just things. They have stories, a past, a present and a potential future. They are very often imbued with so much love.

Love has weight and heft and doesn’t disappear. Just give us time to compute and transmute it from a physical touchstone to an ephemeral memory, to see the paint and jewels embellishing our hearts.

Believe me, we get (or are getting) what really matters. Being stripped of our touchstones affords us that clarity. 

We have to throw our anchors deep inside, not outside.

That’s not learned in a single class in row, row, rowing our boats gently through life. It takes something to anchor ourselves inside.

And while we do it, we cling to the true touchstones and anchors - our beloveds - family, friends, pets, the faith we hold deep inside that we are

all connected

by something

intangible,

invisible,

untouchable by fire.

We are clinging to love. 

And there is lots of that coming to us all and for that we are grateful.