Return to home for many = ashes

This morning I drove to Bottle Barn (perilously low on bourbon) and one of the roads that leads to BB is Airway Drive. Airway is one of the streets leading to the Coffey Park neighborhood that burned in the early hours of Monday morning, October 9.

Today was the first time residents could get into the neighborhood and see what, if anything, remained of their homes.  In order to get in, one needed proof of residency in that area, so no gawkers were allowed past the checkpoint. They started letting people in at 10:00 a.m.  I was on a side street that didn't go all the way through to Coffey Park, so getting to BB was a snap. But on the way out I came back on Airway because there's a traffic light there and it makes it a lot easier to exit that industrial area.  Already, at 10:30 this morning, there were hundreds of people on the two access roads, waiting in their cars, barely moving, inching north towards the burned areas.  I was driving south and it was impossible to not notice the grim looks on those drivers' faces. I just heard on the radio that the lines of cars now, at 3:00 p.m.,  stretch for blocks and blocks, possibly for miles.

Imagine it: you are 100% sure your home and everything you owned have been reduced to ash and yet you are 100% compelled to return to that home and experience that sorrow first hand. The grief is now even more real than it has been for the past 11 days.  You have masks and gloves because you know there are particles in the ash and in that air that you do not want in your lungs or on your skin. No street signs exist, it's difficult to find the street you lived on but you find it because police have written the names of the streets on pieces of cardboard, or they have spray painted them on a curb that remains. So little remains, you are amazed/shocked by the devastation that you, like everyone, have only seen on video.

Then what? Do you look to see if some tiny scrap of your life from October 8 still remains? Do you cry, do you curse, do you take photos?  Or do you just get back in  your vehicle and drive away?  Any small relic remaining might be too painful to keep but at the same time it might be too precious, memory-wise, to leave behind.

I, for one, can try to imagine the feelings but I cannot fathom their reality.  The sadness must be overwhelming but it is coupled with the anguished gratitude that you and your family are still alive. 

It will be a weekend of sorrow and acceptance for all those people who lived in that neighborhood.  Please keep a kind thought for all of them.  And bottom line, be kind, be kind to anyone you interact with.  Give money to the organizations who are helping the fire survivors who are in need. 

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