The Wind and The Angel
Story Number 21: Woes and Gifts, Number 7
(Written 8/5/22)
I still have tears in my eyes as I write this. Today it was a calm morning, sunny, not too hot, pleasant. I was just sitting and reading different, interesting articles about health; in the moment, enjoying my day, having just finished my coffee. And then suddenly a soft, but enveloping wind seemed to come up from the ground and it swirled around and the trees gently swayed and their leaves fluttered. Then the panic rose in my chest and my breath caught in my throat. I resisted the urge to hyperventilate, taking measured, calm, deep breaths. I closed my front door as to not hear and feel this, what should have been thought of as a pleasing breeze. I stood by the front door and rested my hands on nearby counters because I felt lightheaded, and I was suddenly disassociating. I turned around to sit down and was dizzy. Then I sat on the couch and cried a calm, plaintive cry.
I have cried, after the fire, and more recently I have cried a lot, but that has been more of the gut-wrenching, sobbing flood of tears. This is the first time in the three years and nine months since the fire that I have cried like this. This cry was just about sadness. Just a simple sadness for my losses. Since the fire I have been lost, befuddled, exhausted, overwhelmed, frustrated, beat down, heart-broken, bereft, and rageful. Rageful toward the motherfuckers (aka Pacific Gas and Electric, or PG&E) who had “plans” to turn off the power the day of the fire because of the predicted high winds, but chose for some profoundly idiotic reason not to, which then collided with their other idiotic chose of NOT fixing a well-known decrepit electrical tower that finally failed and sparked. The sparks to be fanned by the winds, to then turn into flames, the flames to be driven toward my town, Magalia, and Paradise, where the towns and my home and all but a few of my belongings were consumed along with everyone else’s; and 85 people experienced the ultimate loss, their lives.
On the day of the inferno, as I was putting the final items in my car and I was getting ready to go back into the house to get my Bengal cat son, Ku-Co. I remember, vividly, very vividly (I can see myself being there as I write this) standing on my front porch and suddenly hearing what sounded like rain falling on the roof of my house and in the yard. And my heart leapt with a feeling of joy and I thought “It’s a miracle! It’s raining! The rain can help quell the fire!” But upon closer inspection I saw that the “rain” was actually pine needles, tiny pieces of leaf litter and other bits of the forest floor that had been swept up into the atmosphere and then forcefully dumped back down, not unlike rain. And because I used to be a firefighter (loving the irony here), I knew what was happening: intense, fierce forest fires can create their own weather systems, that pick up debris from the ground, launch it up into the atmosphere and then the debris rains down in front of the path of the fire. I already knew from seeing the terrible plume of smoke in the distance from my kitchen window that morning, and then driving to the top of my street to get a better look and hearing the roaring far-off jet engine sounds, which is what ferocious forest fires sound like, (something I also knew from my training) that it was time to grab what I could and evacuate.
It was terrible, having that tiny moment of joy, thinking it was raining, to the plummeting despair of knowing the fire was coming to consume my house and all my belongings. So I went inside and Ku-Co went calmly into his carrier (something he had never done before; but he knew too), and I loaded him in the car. As I was locking the door to my house, even at that time knowing it was a futile gesture, as if I could lock out the fire, the last thing I was to grab from my house was a wooden and metal angel I had hanging on the wall of my porch. She is embellished with tin roses, a twisted wire for a halo, dowls for arms and legs, and her body is arched in what looks like blissful, freeing flight. She currently resides on the wall of my home, with her pre-fire Magalia dirt still on her.
And that is the thing about living with PTSD. Suddenly, not unlike that wind that came the day of the fire and the wind that came just now, like a very much uninvited guest, that is how things can trigger my PTSD, suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere. I am just minding my own business, living my new life, not thinking about the fire, and then suddenly I am transported to a moment I wish had never happened in my life and I feel completely out of control and at the mercy of forces outside of myself. There are many things to hate about having PTSD, but this, being taken out of the moment of my present life, is definitely on the top of my list.
But I said “living with” PTSD, because that is what I am intentionally doing—living. Every day I choose to move beyond the tragedy. I choose to no longer call past events from my life (and there are others, as I already had PTSD before the fire from my job as a child abuse investigator). I no longer call these past events “problems” or “issues” but am choosing to call them “interesting life experiences.” I intentionally look around and see the beauty that still exists in my life. I count my blessings. I practice my gratitude. And I never have to look too far to find the irony and absurdity that is my companion and provides me with mirth and deep laughter on a daily basis.
And so I sit here today, crying on and off, in sadness, for my losses, for myself. Tears raining down like the leaf debris that was not the rain. This, these tears, though, unlike the debris, are a good thing as they release my sorrow and quell my pain.
