Survivor’s Guilt
Everyone must remember a time (or 2) when they lost their wallet. And it felt like the world was turned upside down. What an inconvenience! We’d have to spend the whole day on the phone canceling credit cards and making an appointment with the DMV to replace our license. Or that time we lost our iPhone — the hub of all existence. We were practically neutered until the next day when Apple handed us a replacement and with a little help from the cloud things were back to normal pretty quickly. Our favorite earrings left behind in a hotel room? A stolen Passport?
Well. Everything is relative, isn’t it? Imagine if you lost everything you owned. I can’t even.
I’ve been MIA figuratively and literally. The night before all hell broke loose in LA I flew off to perform on a cruise ship in the Caribbean for ten days. The day after I boarded I got the news. On day 2, the Palisades was almost gone, so was Altadena and there were 2 new fires — one just south of my Laurel Canyon home and the other just north. There on the Watch Duty App was an icon of my house right in the middle of this ring of fire.
My friend and house sitter Stacey evacuated with our kitty Nimbus but not before she sent me the accompanying image of the sky.
I’m lucky. I returned from my trip last night and my home was still standing. Although when I walked outside at 5AM this morning the sky above the mountains — usually crystal clear — was a milky gray. But everything else in my yard was pretty much in its place. The lights were still strung, Buddhas still standing, hammock still hanging, wind chimes still chiming. Amazing.
Why me? There but for the grace of God.
I am suffering nonetheless from Survivors Guilt — the response to an event that some people experience when they survive a traumatic event or situation that others did not.
How tragically random tragedy can be.
I called my friends whose homes did not make it. Tina picked up the phone and said, “There are no words.” Of course there aren’t. I just listened. It’s overwhelming. Unimaginable. Her son said it’s like his entire childhood is gone. And yet I’ve seen such grace from those whose lives went up in smoke. They are holding it together. They have found community while social media has tried to politicize the tragedy.
Tina said, “Winds were are 100 mph. There was no amount of fire fighters or water that could have put out that fire.”
This has been a wake up call. I’m rethinking that closet by my front door where I’ve kept important papers, CDs of home movies, my cat’s carrier and a backpack with cash, protein bars and medication. Just in case. You never know. But things just got real. I’ll be adding photo albums, vinyl records, 2 guitars and my daughter’s childhood artwork to a shelf.
And next time I lose my wallet or iPhone or those silly earrings I’ll remember those wise words: don’t you dare sweat the small stuff.
Next week I’ll get back to it. Slowly we will find our humor again. I’ll tell you all about making music on a cruise. But for now, as I just returned home last night, I believe an extended moment of silence in this space is in order. In the meantime all I can think of is ‘how can I help?’
I’ll leave you with a link to those whose lives will need rebuilding. If you recognize someone on it perhaps they’ve listed a GoFundMe to which you could contribute.
My heart goes out. ❤️🩹