I finally found some time to sit down this weekend and finish my blog about the fire. Part I can be read here.
Today I thought I would fill you in on what was going on at our neighbour’s house, while I was running around looking for the fire in my house.
Ralph and Marion, a youngish retired couple, were our neighbours at that time. In their sixties, they had certain health problems they were dealing with, but nothing serious, so they were active and interesting people who participated in neighbourhood life. Marion was always out working in the garden, or decorating her house or going off to some social function or another. Ralph was more of a homebody and his main interest seemed to be his car. He was often outside washing it, polishing it, dusting it, airing it out or some such thing. I am sure as a teenager he was the kid with the fabulous car that all the other kids admired.
We don’t have garages on these small lots, so our cars are out in all sorts of weather. If ice or snow were called for, Ralph would sometimes cover his car with plastic. It got to be a neighbourhood joke of sorts. If we were out washing or working on our car, a neighbour might come by and say, “Oh, you’re Ralphing your car.” or “I need to go home and Ralph my car too.”
Can you guess where I am going with this? You’re right; it was Ralph’s car that went up in flames. It was a fairly new car too. The assorted dusty old clunkers everyone else in the neighbourhood had were as cool as cumbers that night, but Ralph’s new car was “hot”! Literally!
On the night their car burst into flames, Ralph and Marion had retired to their beds in a room at the back of the house, and all their windows were closed tight. As a result, they didn’t hear or smell anything. The fire trucks were at their house, people were gathering around and they slept throught it all, even the loud banging on their front door. The firemen were getting ready to burst the front door down so they could get into the house to turn off the gas and electricity just in case the house caught fire. One of the neighbours asked the firemen to wait while he ran into his house to try to call Marion on the phone. After many rings a sleepy Marion answered the phone and she was told to get up and open the front door or firemen would break it down. She stumbled to the front door and no sooner had she opened it than firemen with wet sooty boots brushed past her, trudged along her white carpets and down to the basement to turn off the gas and electricity.
If I was in a state of shock, I can only imagine what Marion was feeling at that awful moment. Ralph was right behind her at the front door and I don’t think either of them could take in what was happening. Marion’s gaze was on the sooty footprints on her white carpet and Ralph was staring in disbelief at his flaming car. Oh dear.
What a night for all of us. I was a shaken heap of nerves after my rude awakening from my bed, but at least I didn’t have the aftermath of the clean-up to contend with the next morning like Marion did. I had major work to do on my feelings, but she was dealing with her feelings and her destroyed car and her damaged house.
I went outside around mid-morning the next day and saw her on her hands and knees beside a pail of hot water at her front door. She had a scrub brush in her hand, and was trying to get the sooty, melted-rubber footprints off her porch. Her driveway was covered in a mixture of melted rubber, and residue of chemical spray the fire department had used on the car. Each step in and out of the house tracked more of the outside mess inside. She was trying to at least clean a small path to the front door, before she dealt with the damage to her carpets inside.
No one was hurt in the fire, and we were all thankful for that. It could have been much worse, and really in the grand scheme of things it was a pretty small event. Houses, people and pets were fine, and the car was new and insured so it could and would be replaced with no problem. The trauma was huge in Marion and Ralph’s life though and took them awhile to get over it. Me too!
As I lay in bed the other morning I thought about all these things, and the irony of the situation. How awful, that of all the cars in the neighbourhood, it was Ralph’s new one, his pampered, prized possession that went up in flames. There was no rhyme or reason for it and it seemed so unfair that it was Ralph’s baby that was damaged.
Have you ever felt like this has happened to you? The one thing that you treasure more than anything else, and have taken great care of, suddenly goes up in flames. You did the best you could and followed all the rules, but now you are standing there with ashes all around you and a terrible mess to clean up. Other people seem to be getting away with murder, while you have to stand by and watch your hopes and dreams go up in smoke.
Hopes and dreams for your kids, your new home, your promotion, your book deal, your retirement plan – whatever you took great care of and treasured; you now watch smoulder in dust and ashes. God it hurts. It just plain hurts.
You took such good care of your “life’s treasure” - cleaned it, washed it, polished it, protected it from the elements and still it went up in flames. You now stand dumbfounded and look up and down the street in your life and see other old clunkers sitting dusty and neglected, and they are ok. How come? You ask. The neighbour’s treasures aren’t threatened. Why yours? Why now? Why this of all the things in your life?
Has your “life treasure” ever been on fire and you didn’t even know about it? Maybe a friend had to call you and awaken you from a deep sleep of denial and tell you to wake up and get out!
Sometimes bad things happen to good people and we just have to deal with what life sends our way. Ralph’s car had an electrical short and no matter how much polishing and washing he did, the car would still have gone up in flames. He didn’t neglect the oil changes or the tire rotations. He did nothing wrong! It was something out of his control and nothing he could have done would have prevented what happened. He did nothing wrong! He did nothing wrong...YOU did nothing wrong!
The aftermath of such an ordeal is so hard to clean up and sometimes you feel overwhelmed and so alone in the task. You scrub one area, but the mess keeps getting tracked back into your life and leaving marks all over your heart. What do you do first, and where do you find the strength to do it?
You find it inside! Inside! You have the strength inside to face anything sent your way.
There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
Washington Irving
When you come to these times in your life, pick up your bucket, fill it with whatever you have, then start at the front door of your life and work from there. Even though you might feel totally alone, your friends and family see what you are going through and they will help you if you let them. They can't take the pain or trauma away, but they can support you and help you get through it.
We have to come to a point where we let the unanswerable questions go, pick up our buckets and start cleaning what we can. We can allow ourselves to feel what we feel and even say it out loud. This is not fair! I don't like it! I don’t understand what happened or why, and I feel so hurt and angry. I might understand why it happened someday, but then again, I might not. For now,I will not let what happened rob me of today’s joy. Today is all I have. I will try to love and accept what is instead of mourning the what isn’t, and get on with my life.
Forgive yourself for what you did wrong, don’t accept blame or guilt for something you had no control over and get on with your life.
If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what that purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. Viktor Frankl
He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. Nietzsche
The last of human freedoms – the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances. Viktor Frankl
7 comments:
As both Bob Cratchet (?) and Ralph might have said: "Another Triumph, my dear."
Nice to hear from you. As you make clear in this posting, we must soldier on.
It's kind of funny in a way that it had to be exactly Ralphs car that had to go up in flames.. Well, it's good that he had insurance at least!
But also it's kind of sad when you see what effect something like that can have on people. Thankfully I haven't experienced anything like that before. Hopefully I won't, for now...
I just stumbled across your journal and it really is a wonderful read...please continue! Haha makes me almost look forward to my days of retirement...haha, only 47 years until then...
I really liked your post. I keep seeing your name on other blogs I frequent, and I feel like we're running in the same circles, and just haven't stumbled upon each other yet. So, I came for a visit.
I hope this doesn't sound mean, or wrong, but I can't help but think upon reading the story that his car might have just been the right one to go up in flames. I kept thinking back to something our pastor said a few weeks back in church. He was talking about how we need to be careful not to worship material wealth and our possessions. That God doesn't look fondly on us spending too much time focusing on our belongings. I'm certainly not saying that he did, or that he didn't earn it or deserve his car. I think, though, that it could have been a sign for him to stop and realize what he really has in his life, and to focus on the more important things. Of course, it may have just been his hobby, too, and not that big. Either way, it's still sad, and I hope he can turn it into something good. If nothing else, he should be so glad that it was his car and not his house and family that went up in flames! He still has his life and all of the joys that come with it! Plus, he gets a new car to start all over again with!
Christi's comment reminds me quite a bit of the foundation of Buddhism. Buddists believe that the purpose of life is to learn that nothing lasts and that suffering comes from being attached to things or ordinary existence. Until people learn this, they are destined to repeat the cycle of death and rebirth. Only by freeing themselves from the desire and giving up the sense of self can people be free of this cycle.
I've even seen where a Buddist will spend days upon days making intricate artwork out of individually coloured sand grains and then destroy their own work of art when completed to show that they have no attachement to such ordinary things.
Quite a remarkable way of thinking. Eastern religions are all so fascinating.
McD
Thanks for stopping by to say hello.
I do read Lynn and see shadows of Raymond Carver in his writing. I don't know Lynn's story, but he writes out of his pain and there is beauty there. I read and am moved in my spirit. I don't understand or see the full picture of what he is saying at times, but somehow I relate.
Grief flows to grief, pain flows to pain. I think that is what it is.
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