Doug & Kaija's House Fire Relief
Donation protected
As I stand here in someone else's clothes and someone else's shoes, I'm watching the last pieces of my home, my farmstead, smoulder. Its ruined bones blackened and it's chimney collapsed. The firefighters worked for hours, trying their best to put out the flames but the fire was already too great to conquer when they arrived on Friday afternoon.
We have lost everything in the house, except for the clothes on our backs and the cat and the dog. The fire consumed our life long into the night. My beautiful things. My treasures. My wonderful books that always seemed like all the friends I would need in this life, that taught me the things that I know. My beadwork and baskets. My artifacts and bones and feathers. My art, paintings and supplies. My jewellery, my tools and my gems. The 200 year old furniture I've collected over my short life. The collection of heirloom seeds, from generations of gardeners. My snakes and my baby chickens. Our violins and guitars, pianos and sheet music. The vintage Hudson's bay blankets and Pendletons. Pieces of me. The irreplaceable pieces of my beautiful world.
I realize now the difference between belongings and things. These artifacts belonged to me in the way that when I found them, I took on their stories, the stories of the people who built them. The hands that crafted them. The bodies that wore them. And I belonged to them. The tools and the wood and patina over ages. The patina of other people's time on this Earth.
I was a custodian of their meaning and their place in the world, and I brought significance to things that were overlooked and forgotten. Thrown out. Their stories became my stories and I found meaning and wholeness in their re-telling; I breathed life into these heirlooms with my own hands by making them useful again. They were things to other people, but I was the sum of their parts.
I feel like a ghost. My friend Jen calls us fire ghosts, like we are shells walking around but our other selves pass through the world unseen. I feel like I walk through walls. I talk to people but it's not me speaking. Pieces of me evaporated into the sky with the ashes of my life, like the bonds that held me here are no longer attached. I don't feel like I will ever sleep again. Eating is a formality, because the food doesn't taste the way it should.
I realize that in my 28 years on this earth, I've never had my heart broken until now.
The house will be rebuilt. This house that I loved in and fed people in and found myself in. That we renovated with our hands and our hearts. Loving it with our being there.
We will have a place to live, but a very different life that will be. My father in law has lost a life's worth of collecting. His books and toys, cars and memories. All of our hearts are broken, our sense of ourselves, shaken.
We will spend the next couple of months sifting through the charred debris, hoping to see a little of our old lives there, like excavating a tomb of someone you loved.
We have lost everything in the house, except for the clothes on our backs and the cat and the dog. The fire consumed our life long into the night. My beautiful things. My treasures. My wonderful books that always seemed like all the friends I would need in this life, that taught me the things that I know. My beadwork and baskets. My artifacts and bones and feathers. My art, paintings and supplies. My jewellery, my tools and my gems. The 200 year old furniture I've collected over my short life. The collection of heirloom seeds, from generations of gardeners. My snakes and my baby chickens. Our violins and guitars, pianos and sheet music. The vintage Hudson's bay blankets and Pendletons. Pieces of me. The irreplaceable pieces of my beautiful world.
I realize now the difference between belongings and things. These artifacts belonged to me in the way that when I found them, I took on their stories, the stories of the people who built them. The hands that crafted them. The bodies that wore them. And I belonged to them. The tools and the wood and patina over ages. The patina of other people's time on this Earth.
I was a custodian of their meaning and their place in the world, and I brought significance to things that were overlooked and forgotten. Thrown out. Their stories became my stories and I found meaning and wholeness in their re-telling; I breathed life into these heirlooms with my own hands by making them useful again. They were things to other people, but I was the sum of their parts.
I feel like a ghost. My friend Jen calls us fire ghosts, like we are shells walking around but our other selves pass through the world unseen. I feel like I walk through walls. I talk to people but it's not me speaking. Pieces of me evaporated into the sky with the ashes of my life, like the bonds that held me here are no longer attached. I don't feel like I will ever sleep again. Eating is a formality, because the food doesn't taste the way it should.
I realize that in my 28 years on this earth, I've never had my heart broken until now.
The house will be rebuilt. This house that I loved in and fed people in and found myself in. That we renovated with our hands and our hearts. Loving it with our being there.
We will have a place to live, but a very different life that will be. My father in law has lost a life's worth of collecting. His books and toys, cars and memories. All of our hearts are broken, our sense of ourselves, shaken.
We will spend the next couple of months sifting through the charred debris, hoping to see a little of our old lives there, like excavating a tomb of someone you loved.
Organizer
Kaija Heitland
Organizer
Gibsons, BC
