Day 2

Friday

It was March 16th, my sixth wedding anniversary.

I know we did other things on this day, but the biggest thing we did was clean out our apartment.  We had found out the day before that our insurance was done processing, so we sent out texts and emails to try to rally a crowd to come help empty the unit.

It was a Friday night and Spring Break to boot, so we honestly did not expect a soul to show up.

We had a pretty busy day, and I had to take the kids to a friends house to play, so I was late to our designated 4:00 start time.  By the time I got there at 4:30, there were several people there.  Most of them were people I barely knew from our church congregation.  Yet here they were, spending their Friday night cleaning out our disgusting apartment and picking through our belongings.  One couple was even using their precious date night on our behalf.

I was so grateful.

I tried to make myself useful, but it was so hard.  It was so hard to see everything we owned spread out on the lawn and picked over and thrown away.  I knew it had to be done but it was just awful.

Anything we thought we could save, we loaded on to a U-Haul and took to our gracious friends garage.  Anything trashed was left in the apartment.  That included mattresses, our couch, the rocking chair I nursed my babies in, and an heirloom sitting chair that had been my great-grandmothers.  My Grandma had recovered it, then given it to me when she moved.  I loved that chair.  It was so beautiful.

Then, of course, there were the clothes.  Some was thrown away, but most of it was put into bags.  Some of the bags got taken to wash and I still don't know where everything is.  Most of the kids things will need to be thrown away, because the fire was the worst in the boys' room (we spent hours the next day at the laundromat - almost all of mine and Tyler's clothes came clean and NONE of the kids stuff did).

I kept thinking it would have been easier if it had just all burned, because going through all our stuff was so hard.  We kept what felt like a ton.  I'm confident that much of it will be thrown away in the coming months, but we couldn't stand to throw things away that we thought we could save.  There was so much loss as it was, and we figure we might as well try.

After that, I was just so exhausted emotionally and physically.  I don't think I really helped that much, but I'm grateful to everyone who did.  I don't know how I could have gotten through it without so many people to help decide, move, sort, and toss.  I held it together, but shortly after everyone left I just cried and cried.  Seeing all the trashed things piled up in the house, everything useful gone, it really hit me that our home and our life in that apartment was over.  I was surprised by how much grief that brought me.

We went back to where the kids were playing and their hostess, who is also an old friend of ours from our Rexburg days, offered us dinner.  We were starving and it was late, so we were so grateful.

She gave us some shoes for the boys that we were so grateful to have.  Like I said, most of the kid stuff is trash, so we have used those shoes every day.  The funniest thing about it was how excited TJ was for his new shoes.  He was very possessive of them and showed me each pair.  He told me "These are my new shoes!"  I'm sure that he is coping with losing so much by treasuring the new things he is gaining.

We had a hard time getting the boys to sleep that night.  They were too exhausted to sleep and we were too exhausted to stay awake!

We did make the kids sleep in a bed together (I had been sharing with Eli and Tyler with TJ) so we could snuggle for a few short seconds before falling asleep.  That was how we celebrated our anniversary this year.

I made a remark to my dad that morning that, for six years of marriage, we didn't have much to show for it anymore.  My dad replied that those who came to help us, our friends and family, the number of people sending help and jumping to our aid, were a much better measure of our lives than any earthly possession we had lost in the fire.  He was right.  Seeing all those people come to help us, that was a great way to celebrate the life that Tyler and I have built together.  We feel so incredibly blessed to have such incredible people around us.