The kids have found a rent house with a pool. It is right around the corner from their house. The insurance company pays for them to be there, furnishes the entire home right down to the sheets and gets them in there. They have signed an application, and the home becomes available after the third of March. I don’t want them to go. They have been living with me since the fire. I know they may need to go or feel ready to go, but I feel we are all just so fragile, even myself. Last night I held my daughter as she cried. “I don’t want to list everything in my life, everything I worked so hard for. It is hard to list it and hard to be reminded that it is gone. I want this over. I don’t want to finish this because then they will bulldoze my house.” I held her on the couch, stroked her hair while she cried, and answered a text from her husband who was alone in the room next door to the living room. He was having a hard time being alone for a few minutes because of his trauma.
How do I help her? I have made her comfortable. I wish I could go through the list for her. What could I add to a target wish list? She asked. “I think of my food processor, and I don’t know what size or capacity it was. I just know it was a perfect size and when I think of it, I see the image of it burned up and sitting on my counter. ”
My heart breaks for the darkness that tries to seep into the lives of two loving hearts through a disaster. If they were children, I could rock them and hold them tight and say I’m here everything will be o.k. What do I do with grown-ups? I can’t take the pain away, I have to stand back and watch them go through it, I watch it try to sneak up as it nibbles away at their normal, their sanity, and I pray and remind them to look at all the good that is happening around them. There are miracles everywhere. They can’t see them through the haze.
I make a thanking God for, poster and put it on my fridge. I tell the kids and ask them to add to it. Instead, later they request poster board and sit together finding their blessings. You have to hold on to those as the devastation can steal everything, if you allow it.
Sometimes you breath for others when they cannot.
Pusche