Unreal and Lovely
Story Number 12: Woes & Gifts Number 4
(Written 11/7/22, 1 day from the 4th anniversary of the fire)
Part One: Unreality
Many things contributed to my feeling of unreality, of being unmoored, of being a stranger in my own life. It was the drive through the charred, lunaresque landscape, on streets that were familiar, yet not, as the names of the streets remained the same but the contents of those streets, the houses, the trees, the simple, daily activities and proofs of people’s existence, and the people themselves, were missing; distilled into heaps of ashes, twisted, holocausted metal, and fallen, blackened brick. It was the loss of not just my town, my home, and 52 years of my belongings, but it was the loss of my routine, the loss of my future as I thought it would be, and the loss of pieces of my sanity. It was because my entire actuality was picked up, much in the way wind storm that preceded the fire gathered up with force, and swirled and scattered down anything loose in the environment, before the fire then consumed it.
What also contributed to this sense of unreality, was that life for most others around me just went on. It was like living on the border of two worlds, straddling them and not really being or belonging in either. Birthdays, work, vacations, planning for the holidays, mundane and boring things like chores and paying bills just went on for others because the fire did not happen to them. To be surrounded by on-going life felt, I could imagine, what it would feel like to live in a snow globe constantly being shaken by a mean and angry person. Inside my snow globe it was not beautiful snow, but eye-burning ashes, embers, pieces of my burned life swirling around and around; dizzying, exhausting, and a bad dream from which I could not wake. Outside the snow globe was the rest of life, going on its unaltered course for most others. I could see life outside the snow globe, I knew it was there, but I was trapped inside, unable to reach the other side, my total life at the whims of the cruel part of The Universe. Out of control. Unmoored. Untethered. Unanchored. Unhinged. Surrounded by seeming calm while a dark, ashy blizzard raged inside and immediately surrounding me. Reality and unreality had become spliced and this is the fabric of my new life. I don’t get to don a new coat made of warm, soft, beautiful fabric. I now have to wear this fabric interwoven of life that has bifurcated, one part going on uninterrupted and the other part that is my burnt, torn, melted, existent but non-existent life that has become stitched into my body and my mind, to never, ever fully leave me; a tattoo not of my choosing. I see things, but they are slightly out of focus. I hear things and I suspect they are reaching my brain, but somewhere on their journey from the outside in, they have become jumbled and confused. I breathe and I move but how can this be when part of me is dead? What compels me to move through the days? Muscle memory? The expectations of others acting like the draft of a ship, pushing me along in the wake of their bow?
But somehow I got up every day and kept moving forward.
Part Two: Lovely Unreality
December 8, exactly one month since the fire. Gentle crunches on the ground. I hear the tiny hooves walking determinedly and then her lovely face comes into view between the charred, skeletal remains of a large shrub. Without hesitation she continues to walk toward me, in the graceful gait of all deer who are going about their daily life in a place that is familiar and safe. It is tempting to be pulled body, mind and soul into the unreality of the surroundings, all 150,000 decimated, charred acres. The buzzing of chainsaws in the distance, finishing the work that the fire started, also adds to the unsettling nature of the moment.
But the deer continues to walk toward me. She pauses and smells in my direction, smells around her, flicks her ears, and then continues on closer, looking at me very intently, ears forward, alternating her head level with and below her body. “Hello,” I say, “Whatcha doing pretty girl?” I ask her if she likes the carrots, since they seem untouched from my visit two days prior, and I ask where her people are. She moves forward and stops at the area the food and water are laid out a mere 6 feet from where I am sitting in my car with the door open; the same place the winter food was placed in years past, before the fire. As if in answer to my query, she picks up and nibbles a carrot, crunching it contentedly. I eat my peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and she eats the carrots and bird seed, calmly moving around to find the choicest bits of food, often with her back to me, her posture and demeanor consistently calm. She clearly trusts me.
Trust
Before the fire, we had the type of relationship with our wildlife that was coexistent and respectful, we could easily be 15 feet away without them moving off. I could even drive slowly through our cul-de-sac, roll down my window and say hi to the birds or deer on the road and they would look placidly at me and continue on with their business without being disturbed, but lingering too long or getting too close could make them nervous, so I was mindful of being a calm presence, but of also moving on and letting them have their space. But this day, being in the close proximity of and conversing with this lovely deer about what had befallen us, was different. Our closeness did not bother her, nor did my conversing with her. Even as we finished our meals and I moved around my former home, she remained on the property, calmly grazing around, coming back to be closer to me when I sat in the car again; she remained for about 30 minutes. This was also very unreal, sharing this space with another being, a being who had experienced the same devastation I had, a devastation that we both survived and were both forever altered by. I felt a deep bond, a kinship with this fellow creature, just being in each other’s presence, we understood each other and I felt like we needed each other in this unreal, yet most real of moments. However, in this moment I actually felt present, attached, calm, centered, grounded It is not that my fellow humans did not give me comfort during that time, but a lot of it felt fleeting and it was tinged with and driven by others’ anxiety, as if people did not know how to act in my presence, perhaps fearful my unfortunate luck would rub off onto them. But this deer, Lovely as I came to call her, could just be with me and she was exactly what I needed and I sense she needed the same from me. It was an unreal, beautiful, magical gift inside of an unreal, horrific, nightmarish tragedy. It was a surreal moment I was very willing to have in my life and for which, almost four years later, I am still profoundly grateful.
As she moved off after our time together I said, “I love you.” Her tiny hooves clopped on the uncharred street as she walked calmly into the fire-scarred forest, back into our unreal, real world.
