Dissecting loss

What would it be like to lose everything?  This happened yesterday to a family we know -- their house burned down and they lost their home, their possessions and their pets.

It is such a profound loss that it takes a while for it to sink in.  As word spread across the community, you could feel that everyone had the same reaction -- that feeling in your gut that lodges there and won't go away, and keeps reminding you that something is NOT RIGHT.  And then you put yourself in the same position.

What would it be like to leave your house in the morning and then return to find it completely gone?

My first feeling was of course the horror of losing loved and cherished animals.  Unlike objects, they are irreplaceable and forever gone.  Very hard to imagine, and my heart goes out to them for the grief they must feel.  

Then I thought, wow, there would be no place to "go."

Everyday you go home.  Your house is where you "go."  It is where you keep everything, where you sleep, sit, eat, etc.  I actually construed the loss of a place to "go" to be more keen than the loss of possessions, interestingly enough.

I woke up this morning with the thought that I need to safeguard those items that are irreplaceable -- like photos, all the boxes I have of unfinished novels and short stories, my diaries and the contents of my computer ... and I really didn't get that much further.  Clothes, who cares.  I can't think of one item of clothing that I couldn't live without.  If I go from room to room, I am somewhat amazed at how little attachment I have to the items contained within.

I have jewelry -- nothing expensive, a lot of earrings, a few necklaces ... wouldn't be a huge big deal.

I love my computer -- but with the exception of its contents (and that is something I intend to safeguard for real this time, no more back-ups are for sissies mentality!) I could get another one.  My cookbooks, which I have dog-eared with my most favorite recipes, well, it would be an inconvenience, but not by an means all that horrible.  I love all my books, but I've read most of them and could always buy them again if I needed to.  That goes with the majority of the furniture -- we don't really have any precious antiques -- some bureaus from grandparents, bedside tables, that kind of thing, but they are utilitarian mostly for me.

So what am I saying?  That it would be no big deal?  No, of course not.   But I think it would be more of a huge pain in the neck to have to replace things than the overall feeling that I can't continue life without the things that were lost.

This is of course very easy to say as I type on my computer in my office within my intact house and surrounded by my dogs.  I am not in any way trying to minimize the tragedy that has befallen this family -- I am more trying to impart how interesting I found it that there are so many things I would not grieve.  I was even saying to Peter that it would feel like a rebirth -- a chance to start over without the encumbrances of things that we have been hauling around with us for years and years and years.

He didn't believe me, and maybe I don't even believe myself.  In any case, it is a massive blow and it really gets you thinking, because it could happen to anyone.