Fraser - Burnt but never Broken

Hi, my name is Dave and I am fundraising for my friends Lee and Lynne Fraser. This is their story of the tragedy they recently experienced.

Please read, please help.

Please love everyone you have.

We are Lee (Scott) & Lynne Fraser.

We are survivors.

This is Lynne writing the story of our lives while Lee sits across, digging through his mind palace for all of the important events and precious moments that will live on now only through our memories.

We are survivors of a devastating house fire, which ripped through our home at 4am on January 11th. A fire official said we were about 10 minutes away from a potentially fatal amount of carbon monoxide level in our second floor bedroom. It’s a bad thing to be a sound sleeper in an emergency.

Accepting the fact that we absolutely had to ask for help was a tough decision. The cold reality of life can pretty thoroughly squash whatever pride you try to hang on to. The only shoes and coats we had the day after the fire were given by some wonderful friends and kind neighbors. Last week, replacing spices and condiments was a yikes moment.

The process of writing this story has also been very difficult. It is exhausting mentally, spiritually, somehow even physically. Before the fire it would have been a glorious walk down memory lane. Everyone should write down the good stuff while life is still good. Life turns wibbly-wobbly in no time at all.

So, our house. This was our first & only house. When we moved in almost 30 years ago, we had a Manhattan apartment’s worth of furniture & stuff. We placed our sofa in the middle of our new living room at a wacky angle to fill the space.

Well, our lives and spaces filled up fast. We raised our amazing son, all the while collecting and cherishing all the usual milestones of a child’s journey to adulthood. Once he was grown, we welcomed his wife into our home, then thrilled over our beautiful grandson. We celebrated over a half of a decade of our own very full house.

The kids did move out.

In an eerily quiet house, we, and our cats, had a chat. All agreed we needed to “pump up the jam”, as the youngsters in 1990(?) used to say. Honestly, only two of us agreed, and one of the two in agreement was the Himalayan rescue cat, Fluffy. So, we got a puppy! He is a mini-aussiedoodle. We named him Rip, based on his lifestyle choices.

Rip could always be found wherever I was. And Fluffy could be found wherever Rip was. So we scooped them up quickly and easily on the night of the fire. Clara, our pastel calico, was always a strong independent girl, who liked to be on her own. We called and searched for her, to no avail.

Years back, she had shown up on our doorstep, insisting that we let her in. We did, of course. We soon realized she simply had gotten lost looking for an AirBnB. She had a raspy voice, loved eating and didn’t mind her host family. She may have had a secret crush on Lee.

The fire took Clara from us. The vet later confirmed what we already knew, that she had passed while sleeping, peacefully. Thankfully, the fire itself never reached her.

As the days, weeks, months and years(!) go by, we will continue to be astounded by all of the memories crammed into that house. The sadness comes unexpectedly and in waves. The profound loss and grief are palpable, because every lost object had a story. And one story reminds you of another story and so on & so on.

Like many parents, we had the measuring wall. Ours was in the kitchen doorway, a passage used a million times more than our own front door. Can anything really equal the pride & joy of watching your son turning around & seeing how much he had grown over the last few months? Or that amazing day when, as a teen, he became taller than his own dad! On top of that, we got to see our grandson measure himself against his father’s marks.

Walking through the doorway into a kitchen will never be the same.

Our son, that tiny baby, has grown to 6 feet tall. But as every parent knows, he will always be that little boy to us. As kids do, he probably hates us for it, but we were the over-involved parents. We pulled the late nighters with him when a big project was due at school. Lee was the soccer coach. I was the pinterest mom, before that was a thing, making Harry Potter themed shirts (costumes?) for his annual movie birthday parties. Harry Potter was life! He even made wearing glasses super cool!

26 birthdays

26 Christmases

Building a full regulation sized arcade game in secret & getting it into the house at 5 am. Hiding a hamster in our bedroom closet until Christmas morning. Hunting down the “must have” gaming system, then waiting outside the store all night in a lawn chair, hoping they had enough systems to reach your place in line. Yes, one year Lee had the misfortune of being 2 spots past the last system left on planet earth.

Of course, there was the year of the falling Christmas Tree, And no cats were involved! Fully decorated and unable to bear its own weight. It collapsed onto a tired parent & trapped said parent between a rock & a hard place (the sad tree and the angry coffee table}. Help eventually arrived & we were able to save almost all of the ornaments. We are hopeful that they survived the fire, having been stored in a far corner of the basement. We haven’t been able to gain access to the basement yet.

On the night of the fire, many of the presents we had for our grandson were waiting to be opened. He has an early January birthday, so we like “rolling holidays” so it’s never too overwhelming all at once. Our grandson is on the autism spectrum and he loves, loves, loves, numbers. Letters are almost as cool. We have multiple magnetic boards and he will spend hours working his magic. He was thrilled to see his favorite, a Melissa and Doug board, that somehow survived the fire. Since he grew up for the first 5 years of his life in our home we were worried about how the fire and the loss of so many of his beloved toys would impact him.

He has been to our new apartment, and to our relief, the only thing he wanted to know is:

When can I sleep over?

So, we will get him a bed and life will move on in the way children make possible.

I don’t think we will be able to replicate his old room, as it was his dad’s room when he was growing up. We had covered one entire wall with hand made latch hooks. On another wall I had hand painted a 5 foot Pikachu. He was my son’s hero, even before Harry Potter. All of that has been lost. But we will make sure all of that little boy glory lives on through our grandson.

The fire also consumed all but 2 of our wedding photos, as well as many of our pictures & videos of our son traveling his boyhood journey. Baby, toddler, “big” kid, (as evidenced by the marks on the measuring wall!), soccer player, airsoft player, community theater actor! Although he is probably glad none of those videos survived. Ten years of A Christmas Carol! And numerous other shows that made every parent swell with pride, and cry a little. Although we didn’t look at them often enough, we always knew they were there to be looked at. Take the time to pull out your old photos, maybe even watch your wedding video again. You will smile & laugh. We would if we could.

Being of a certain age, our music ranged from vinyl to cassette to CD. All gone. Yearbooks with novellas written in the margins by your best friend. Ridiculous and important ideas scribbled on bar napkins by old co-workers. Prom dresses and soccer jerseys. Cheerleading uniforms and the Tazmanian Devil t-shirt you wore on your first date with your future wife. If we could just hold them in our hands one more time.

Multiple generations of trophies and awards, both athletic and academic, are melted together in a pile of metal like a modern art sculpture. “Lives Well Lived.”

So, the heart of the fire was focused in the heart of the house, the kitchen. The hub of food and love, the source of green eggs and ham, lunchables, go-gurt, uncountable chicken nuggets, and pasta sauce that took all day to make. The kitchen is gone. Just completely gone. And so is the little shelf that held ticket stubs, silly lunchbox notes, and the collection of outdated school ID’s. And a pink flamingo, bananas in pajamas, and a pillsbury dough boy.

Turn around, and there is the kitchen doorway. And right there, that used to be the measuring wall.

We do need all the physical things that make up a home, and if you can help us rebuild, we would be truly appreciative. Thank you for taking the time to read our story.