Sacred and Afraid

Each of us have our story. We write it on the spot and tweak the narrative over time. We collect our traumas and do the best we can to move forward. At the onset it is important for me to note, that the young man at the heart of this … is no more. A life ended. There are family and friends who will carry this loss with them for the rest of their lives. I’ve read so many accounts that he “got what he deserved”, it was “Darwin at it’s finest”, “one less scum on the roads”. And it pains me more than I can say that the bitter in people’s bones has calcified over their ability to understand someone else’s pain. Because, we don’t know what happened that afternoon. We will never know why this young man fled from police in pursuit. We can never imagine what a high speed chase – for your life – feels like. But ultimately the death of anyone falls on the shoulders of everyone in the community. We failed. Whether it was the absence of health programs, job resources, pesticides or other poisons or the decision to engage in a high speed chase in the first place … one man needed to escape so badly that his life ended. No one walked away here untouched. Not the woman who was driving down the street and swerved to avoid a head on collision. Not the 14 homes who lost power for 28 hours when the driver over-corrected and took out a telephone poll before the car burst into flames. From the first responders to the various repair crews, everyone walks away with the road dust of this disaster. This story is only about the one family where this man came to rest and indeed it is only from my eyes, for each of us internalized that day in our own bio-chemical finger print response that will become part of our meaning making memories forever forward. To the young man who lost his life, know that we honor your final resting place.

White Smoke

I was sitting by the pond, reclined back further than designed in my now sub-zero gravity chair, due to a wonderful wooden riser attached to the front legs that the redneck designed for me which would allow my head to rest lower than my feet. So much so that most of my view is my unpainted toenails against the blue sky. But today there was something seriously unusual in the air above the koi pond. I thought at first it was some fast moving low flying white clouds. But they dissolved too fast and came out of no where so it seemed. My brain tried to make sense of it. Had there been a dryer vent in the tops of those ever greens then I could understand a brief white puff of water vapor. But even if our neighbor’s dryer was on, these came FROM the trees, not over the tops of the branches.

I told the redneck when he came back from getting me a hot pack and he deduced that it was likely a squirrel landing in the pine bramble and sending of a dust cloud. ‘But it was soooooo white.‘ I thought to myself, rather I probably said it out loud. And then took to Google to look up what white puffs of smoke on evergreens mean. Sure enough, there’s a bunch of information about pollen clouds and pine trees. Which was no surprise of course to my husband who had already told me that. Nonetheless I still asked him to take a stick up the path and shake that tree and see if it would do it again. And there certainly was A LOT of dusty pollen that came out of the branches. But I can’t say it was the same white cloud. No there was something different about those two puffs of smoke that I saw. It felt if not auspicious perhaps suspicious certainly as the thought lingered in my mind of rising white smoke.

Lights Out

We were on our laptops in bed after lunch. Pretty much every day, waiting the bitch out known as the postprandial POTS flare that is my modus operandi. We heard sirens. At first off in the distance but they were coming close fast, and Bitzy had enough time to raise her head and get off the beginning of a howl when the house ROCKED with a violent shake that usually means a SoCal quake. Then explosions were heard. POP, POP and poof the lights went out.

“Get the generator…” I asked the redneck. I realize it didn’t sound like an ask, but you need to understand I don’t do particularly well in a power outage so my social graces were sorely lacking.

The redneck got the generator going just as my daughter came rushing down the stairs shouting for everyone to LOCK THEIR DOORS!!!
“Get inside! Lock the doors!! I can hear police outside saying Get Your Hands UP!?”

I turned to my DIL and said softly, “I don’t do well in power outages“. As she reminded me later that night, that’s when Grace said “Hold my Beer”.

We locked the house quickly just as there was a pounding at the door. An armed officer said the fire was coming and we had to RUN!

I took a step outside and that’s when the perfect storm of POTS and imperatives hit the fan. For all the adrenaline in my system, I couldn’t stand and deliver. I said to him softly … breathless … I am disabled … I can’t. He grabbed my arm and ushered me out and down the driveway, when I made it to the street I said I couldn’t do any more and laid down in the middle of the road, which was already blocked off with first responders as the black smoke rose from the slope of trees and thicket in the front of our home.

Inside my son was looking for me. Because apparently no one else left when the cop commanded. They each had wards to attend to. My daughter and her husband gathered up their two small children, my son and his gf grabbed the munchkin cat, my brother-in-law got the leash and his chihuahua and my husband already had Bitz in his arms and was coming to look after me.

I have no sense of pride or pluckiness when it comes to pressure predicaments. I tapped the shoe of a resident elder on the street who was standing with his walking stick watching the scene unfold. He asked if I needed help up and I said, No, I wasn’t able to be upright. Unfortunately that was when another uniform came and told me again that I needed to RUN because the car was going to explode.

TBH I was more afraid for having to move again, than I was for saving my life. Death on the pavement felt far less daunting than anything I was going to have to endure. And indeed, I didn’t know at the time, that someone had already died. 🙏

Not Without My Dog

We have 11 people, 4 dogs and 2 cats in our multigen manor. Two of our two legged members were at work (with one of them on the way to lend a hand and humor) but we were missing our big hairless girl who was in the back bedroom where the redneck and I were only moments ago resting in the equability of our after lunch routine.

He waved down a uniform and said I need to go back inside and get my dog. The officer looked at the fire still growing and waved him by to do so quickly. My husband ran around the far side to our back bedroom patio door only to find it locked. Because moments earlier we locked every door fearing that there was an armed person on the loose. In retrospect of course, we all wish there was.

He tried the piano room door, (we aren’t very creative in our naming convention, there just happens to be an upright piano in the alcove aside of our living room, so that slider is known as the piano room door. I’ll tell you sometime about the faux pas with the African American plumber who asked to use the loo and we told him to go upstairs to the black bathroom.)

Everything was locked. Doors we didn’t even know had locks on them were secured shut. And time was running out. As the redneck turned the corner to the pool side of the property the smoke was THICK. As he opened the gate hoping that the bathroom in the garage was unlocked, he could see the flames inches away from the second floor patio outside my daughter’s suite.

Relieved to find the door open, he ran and grabbed Bo and her leash and headed down to join us. The police stopped him and asked why they saw him behind the house running around … and he said with conviction I went back for my dog!

The Wait

All we could do was wait and speculate, as the teams are telling us the car is going to explode and our house is about to burn down (I’m not sure why the firetrucks couldn’t put out the fire promptly, something about needing Edison to turn off the power first from the downed pole, we were told.)

There was a lot to ponder.
We should have pet carriers as part of our go bags — my son thought as he was covered in cat scratches. And while we were able to grab our furry family members we didn’t have time to gather any important papers, documents or deeds. Everything would burn before our eyes, unless the blaze was reckoned with.

The medical team came to check me out on the ground and asked if I was okay. I tried to talk, but my family was ample able to tell them this was just how I rolled.

She’s disabled, my daughter explained and then proceeded to spell out what POTS stood for and that laying on the ground was what I needed to do. They hooked me up to heart monitors and seemed only slightly concerned, but just as determined to put me in the back of the ambulance.

What is it? I asked the medic. Best I can remember he said 160 over something with a pulse of 125. “Pssssh, that’s fine.” This is a hyperadrenergic flare, I’m gonna be a wreck for a while until things settle down.

“Do you have any other illnesses?“

“Oh yeah, a bunch.” My daughter advised me to stop talking because it doesn’t help me settle.

“Are you allergic to anything?”

“Oh yeah, that too. Lots.“

“Are you feeling okay?” He asked puzzled.

“No, I don’t feel okay. But I don’t feel any worse. ” He was a kind man. We chatted a bit about his newborn at home and why he wasn’t on parental leave (the company didn’t offer it.) And he came back to check on me once more before leaving the scene .. asking me (insisting) that I sign a medical release to absolve their liability. My husband and eldest actually fended off multiple medical personnel who wanted to take me away in a stretcher. The ER isn’t the best place to be with POTS. Though it did make me remember I needed to talk with my PCP about “emergency meds” that I could take if there was some type of prolonged event .. such as this.

Once I signed the AMA and the family realized I would be wating it out with the rest of them, we each began to contemplated life on the street. There were thoughts and jokes about where we could stay if our house went up in flames. Sarcasm for my family is the way we hug.

When we were allowed to return to our home, several hours later, the redneck said to me, go on up ahead, I gotta ask something. I was in my wheelchair being pushed up the driveway, so I couldn’t stay if I wanted to eavesdrop. But he told me as he jogged back to help me up out of my chair … there’s a dead body still in the street, I don’t want no body going to the side of our house where they can see it, keep everyone quiet inside the house. I naturally turned to everyone as we walked through the door — THERE’S A DEAD BODY OUTSIDE IN THE STREET!

I don’t think it even occurred to me before that moment, that someone had died. There were so many paramedics around, my mind may have hoped that the driver survived. This was all on the heals of the Ryan Newman crash we all watched on TV just a week+ ago and that NASCAR driver survived against all odds. So in my mind, I was hoping God spared this young person. The redneck saw them carrying the body earlier in the day. It will be an image that will always stay with him, and in truth he isn’t a visual memory person. But THIS he will always remember in the iris of his mind.

Amazon to the Rescue!

During the winds and bad California summer fires, we bought a dozen lanterns and a bunch of batteries. So we were able to divvy up light for the night to all of our peeps.

Even back at the house, we stayed together outside in the back yard by the pond. There was something peaceful back there, and even if I was not able to “settle” I could at least be in a settled place.

I don’t really remember much from that first night. I was too wound up to eat anything, but I know that Amazon delivery brought three cases of soup. We didn’t know that we’d need them of course, but we were enhancing our emergency preparedness and had ordered not only cases of soup, but also instant hot packs and ice packs for our power outage supplies. Synchronistically both would arrive that night while we were in the dark.

I got a call on my mobile phone from the delivery driver who indicated he had our packages but couldn’t get past the road blocks. We were on lock down inside the house during the investigation but the redneck somehow managed to talk to one of the men on duty and got permission to walk up half a block and get the emergency prep delivery. Our neighbor who wanted to take her car to get flashlights was told no.

Once up at the delivery truck, the driver said he really wanted to make sure we had our things, because he remembered that we were the house that had the goodies (chips, waters, Gatorade, cookies) out during the holidays (we ran a thank you basket for about six weeks when we knew deliveries were even higher than our usual high traffic online orders.) That was a full circle thank you moment, not that you pay it forward to ever receive anything back, but that was a lovely glimpse of how much our hospitality basket was valued.

Wasted

My husband strolled down the next morning to talk to a utility crew working on the street.

As he explained the impact and rebound of the car he pointed out the barkless trees and the scortched earth. One of the workers kept remarking in a long extended breath (think Tommy Chong)… WOW.

I wasn’t here yesterday cause I got WASTED the night before
Cause if was here …

Ye, you guys might have been dead. The redneck completed his thought.

WOW.
It’s a good thing I got WASTED

Let There Be Light

I don’t do well in power outages. And all accounts indicated that we’d have the power back on that night. First they said by 8 p.m., then by 10. But the investigation was taking a long time and the crews didn’t even get to start until much later in the middle of darkness. I did fall asleep, with my LED lantern next to me and the little dog curled up against my chest. But I woke up shortly after 1 p.m. and realized the power was still off. I sent a message to my daughter asking if she’d gotten more updates. And the latest word was that power would be back on by 8:30 in the morning.

I felt the tears well up in my eyes and the fear rise in my chest. I’d been trying to keep it together for so long (and failing miserably at that by any normal standards or deviations from the norm). I felt vulnerable. I felt COLD. When the pain rises in my body, I use hot packs from the microwave to manage. I was grateful for the Amazon chemical heat packs that arrived that night. But they didn’t get hot enough and they didn’t last more than a few minutes. And tonight … I was in pain.

I woke up my youngest daughter and sat with her a bit as I tried to get whatever barrings I could about this new timeline. My head raced to all of the folks in northern California this past year who lost their power for DAYS, some up to a week during our fire storms. My brain wasn’t helping. But eventually I settled down enough and my daughter offered to sleep in our spare guestroom adjacent to my bedroom in case I needed something. Okay .. it’s a walk in closet. But it’s 9′ x 18′ with a 40 gallon fish tank and two twin beds. In fact, we were getting it ready for my Dad’s visit in a few days. The redneck and I were going to stay in the Wardro-BNB while Dad was in the master suite.

8:30 a.m. came and went but we waited until 9 a.m. before starting the generator. At this point we’d lost the food in the fridge so we just powered the wifi and enough banks to recharge cell phones. Oh, and a microwave so that I could have my hot packs to give my dyautonomic body a bit of relief from the pain. I’m forever grateful to the redneck for buying me a generator. It helps ease the abject terror I have about power outages. It doesn’t eliminate it of course, because there are so many real aspects of being disabled and housebound that just get HARD when there isn’t electricity or normal “access” to the outside world. But as we approached the 24 hour mark and several more “extended” ETAs from SCE, my mind was adjusting to the new normal even if my body was still falling apart.

Perhaps it is the higher histamines at dusk, but it’s not unusual for me to feel on edge as the sun goes down. My husband recognized I was getting nervous because the only Edison truck we had seen that day was working up the street and had left an hour ago. And there was literally no updates on our outage, no matter who we called or what website we reloaded.

Tell ya what babe, he said as he leaned in and placed his hand atop mine. Tonight we’re gonna pretend it’s 1880. And we’re gonna do things we’d do if we was livin back then. It’s gonna be fun.

What about an outhouse?! I said trying to throw shade on his attempt to comfort me.

You can use the bathroom. He assured me.

But what if I want to go walk up to the back 40 to pee in the middle of the night?! I don’t watch naked and afraid, but my husband does and I see ads for it when we are watching GoldRush on Friday nights. I had to google what a PSR was (multiple times, because I have little interest in remembering.) However I’d been without power for well over 24 hours and I was getting tempted to run around outside. Sidebar: Not mentioning which house member forgot that our toilets worked fine in an outage and shit in a bag before she realized it was unnecessary. Which still pales to the time I got norovirus and literally shit in a bag outside my patio door not realizing we had company in the living room in plain sight.

We would have gone on talking about our Tombstone time travel but the sound of a large truck made the redneck jump up and look outside. It was the 19th time he’d gotten up to look for a truck that day and I was too shell shocked to be hopeful.

It was an old truck with an experienced single man on board. There was a lot said, the chief was mystified and more than miffed that the power hadn’t been turned on the night before. When he left the crew the power was supposed to have been on, he explained to my husband who was honestly just thankful ANYONE showed up to fix the crisis.

Two phone calls later to read people the riot then two fuses inserted at the top of the new pole and we had power. It certainly felt like a miracle since we’d been in the dark about the repairs for 28 hours.

Tonight we’d eat take out food and throw out the contents of both fridges, following the FDA guidelines and err on the side of safety since we had infants and people with compromised immune systems.

My prayers were answered, my husband whispered to me as we sat on the couch with lights on in the room for the first time in a long while … mostly because we rarely turn the over head lights on in the bedroom, but tonight I needed things BRIGHT.

What did you pray for?

All day I kept praying that the power would be on tonight … for you. Cause I know how hard this all is on you. I knew yous be fine cause I got the generator for you. But I know it’s hard on you when the power is out. And my prayers were answered.

I was touched of course. He’d been super busy the last couple of days making sure we were safe and as comfortable as we could be. His PSR is way higher than most all of ours combined. And yet somehow we all survived. Well, no. Not all of us.

Rest in Peace

The street wise sage did a lot of praying at the crash site also. And would continue with burning some sacred sage to cleanse our space.

As my youngest adult daughter said, we are a good home to come to rest.

There’s an enchanted look to the trees on that hillside. The branches twist and entwine into each other so that beams of sunlight come through making it look like sacred grounds. It’s a good place to come to rest. What happened was wrong. There’s nothing okay about it. But you landed in a good place … and you can move on, in peace.

And just as the guiding light moved through the redneck’s private ritual he looked at the long stretch of disturbed earth and saw something bright in the dirt up ahead of him. As he got closer he smiled softly to himself. Nothing was growing for yards around, but there where he was standing was a tiny yellow flower. Few people understand the significance of the yellow signs from Grace, that have been along my path for almost 15 years. But the first time I explained them to Monks he began noticing them too. He picked the tiny flower and brought it up to me in my room.

It’s all gonna be alright babe.

And in that moment that he handed me the bloom, I could feel my shoulders fall back a bit from their clenched pose near my ears and a longer exhale released from my chest. Sometimes we don’t know how hard we’ve been holding on until we finally begin to let go. It will be a while before my body comes back to what’s normal for me. But I am so ever deeply grateful for where I have landed and in those moments that my mind steps aside, I can feel the sacred in my bones even when I am afraid.