The Day we Lost our whole life

This is the post I’ve been avoiding writing. I’m sure it’s the reason many of you come to my blog at all, but it truly is the hardest one to write. To many of you it’s a story, the one everyone wanted to hear that prompted complete strangers to add me to social media, for them to message my friends wanting every little detail so that it could be passed around like gossip forgetting that it was someone’s real life. That it was real trauma that happened it wasn’t just something you read or watched it was life altering, fuck you up in the head type stuff. While I do try hard to focus on the rainbows, sometimes stories need to be told, and this one paints some in unfavourable light. If you just read that sentence and wondered if I was talking about you A) I probably was b) do some soul searching and change, don’t be gross. I have a fear of fire, I don’t mean just now. Before that night, that changed our lives. My fear was borderline psychosis. I unplugged everything, to the point of unplugging the coffee maker between Tanner’s coffees. I drove that man bonkers. The fireplace scared the living shit out of me. I didn’t touch it I was freaked out that the dogs wanted to lay in front of it. So much in fact that our old dogs did in fact learn new tricks, the command “too close” was quickly in their vocabulary. I did not want the kids near the fireplace. Everyone has always joked I must have died in a fire in a previous life to be so fearful with no apparent reason. At least none that had presented itself up until that point. My nightly routine was ensuring that nothing was plugged in in Landon’s room and ensuring he has a clean pathway in his floor. (For those of you that do not know him Landon is a hot mess express and somehow a bomb always goes off in his room) Somethings don’t make sense even to myself, but it wasn’t worth the anxiety/ sheer panic attacks to not do my nightly routine. (Sidenote I feel a lot of credit goes to Tanner knowing all my quirks and marrying my crazy ass anyways) I didn’t drive in the never had a licence aspect, so living in the middle of nowhere I was a wee bit of a hoarder. We had a stand-up freezer dedicated just to dog meat and it was completely full. Our non-perishables and dry goods resembled a grocery store. The nice thing about the new house was the overflow food storage cold cellar was in the basement, so no one really knew how ridiculous I was in that matter. Our kids eat fresh fruit and vegetables I had an entire chest freezer of frozen just in case because you never know. We were prepared for just about everything I could think to be prepared for Because that’s who I am an over preparer. That’s the thing about anxiety my brain always goes to the bad scenarios, and I can’t calm myself until I’m sure that we are prepared. Why am I telling you all of this? For you to understand that it can absolutely happen to anyone. I never ever thought that it would randomly happen to us. The night of the 16th was much like any other Sunday night I swept and mopped the floors had a million loads of laundry going. I packed the kids lunches the next day was to be their first day of in person learning at their new school. Tanner was reading the weather forecast of a big storm and I wanted to be prepared as the one the previous week never happened. Although I was excited at the prospect of a snow day, being able to spend the day baking, and the kids being able to use the snowboards they received for Xmas. I just completed painting all the cupboards and island black in the kitchen, the next step was to paint the walls so that Tanner could get the backsplash up. It was currently sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor directly in front of the coffee maker to prove a point. Once the kitchen was completed, he promised to start building shelving for the library which would mean the 12 totes in the upstairs hall filled to the brim would finally have a home (and that id need to start bringing more totes of books from the front hall upstairs) I was most excited for this project as I anticipated it to be the most used room in the house We are all big readers. Me and all my plans followed Tanner upstairs to our bedroom. Sunday nights was our tv night we watched one episode on Sundays, this was the last time I’ve watched tv. Funny how life becomes routine when you are busy A.F. We went to bed just like a normal night only I was having dreams I couldn’t breathe. It felt oh so real and someone was screaming, where were my children? I woke up and immediately my eyes and nose were burning. I went to get the children to tell them to come to our room, and I’d get the dogs and we would open the patio door. Snow must have done something to shoot the smoke back into the house. Only Tanner came flying up the stairs yelling at me to grab the children run to the truck and don’t look back and don’t ask questions. Tanner was grabbing our elderly English Bulldog Winston and running downstairs with him (He could no longer do stairs himself) Lillith was hot on his heels. Paige grabbed her cat by the tail and my mums’ jeans from high school (her most prized possession) and followed suit. Landon was in his room trying to button up a dress shirt as I’m yelling for him to grab pants and to not bother with buttoning up until in the truck. He never grabbed the pants, and went flying out the door in his underpants.The poor fucking child said there was going to be police and he didn’t want them thinking he was from a bad home. . I was trying to call 911 and made it halfway down the stairs when I remembered Mushu. I didn’t know how bearded dragons breathed but didn’t want the water to hurt him. I couldn’t get the cage opened in my panic. As I hear Tanner yelling Mama get out now. I ended up having to smash the glass thinking Tanners going to be so mad at me when we get back home. I tossed Mushu onto the front of my nightgown and ran. My truck was still hooked up to the trailer with a full load of wood we had to get off. Next thing I know Tanner announces our family photos and was gone. The sheer panic of him going back into the house as I chased after him. Landon was screaming for me to not go after him that he didn’t want to be an orphan. By some miracle Landon’s screaming snapped Tanner out of it. We got back into the truck where we then watched the fire truck drive by our house. I called 911 because how does that even happen? It was in that moment I knew that we were fucked. Up until this point it was just smoke. Then we noticed a glow, then flames. I had never seen a house fire before, and here I was watching all our dreams on fire not knowing what to do. Tanner pulled out of the driveway and onto the road to wait for the police to show up to tell us what to do. Here I am a fucking adult, and I don’t know what to do or what to say to my children. Landon started to have a meltdown in the back. I told him it would be okay and that I’d replace everything he lost. As he yelled back at me, I don’t care about the things, Betyar’s in there. Betyar is his dog we lost to cancer just before Landon’s birthday. My poor child is having a panic attack over his dog’s urn. We sat for what seemed like an eternity out front of our house telling the children not to look. Realizing the truck was getting low on gas and my purse was inside the house. It was at the front wall that I just watched fall off my house. The one firefighter took our information so that we could leave. But leave for where that was home, we have two dogs that are fighting with the cat non-stop and a lizard with no cage. I had to pee so badly, and I am wearing a night gown. I look back at the children neither one has shoes, so I pass Paige back my shoes and Landon’s found a pair of my dress pants in the back and one of his sweaters. We headed for my dad’s, its white out conditions and we can barely see an inch in front of us. We stopped by my sisters first so the cat could stay with her while we figured it out as he most certainly would need a litter box. When we arrived at my parents Tanner had to keep bringing my boots out so the next person could go inside. The reality set in that we would have to alert some people. What do you even say? This is a tricky thing to address as you don’t want a bunch of random people calling you to get the story or making the situation worse. I can’t even begin to describe the delicate state you are in and how hard it is to formulate thoughts. By this time people had heard the social media friend requests started to roll in, messages from people who we hadn’t spoken to in years. Everyone wanted to know how it happened, what happened…we didn’t even know ourselves, let alone know what to say to others. I didn’t even know how I was going to feed the children or dogs breakfast and here strangers were wanting to know exactly how the fire started. I think a lot for people get caught up in their own nosiness they forget how fucking traumatic it is for the person. I don’t care if you heard the fire trucks or saw the person running out of the fire literally stay off social media with it. It is not your story to tell and the person who experienced the trauma will see those comments and will think very differently of you. I’m horrified by some people in our situation. Those who took photos to send them around or drove to our property and continue to, to this day. You should be thankful you have never experienced this in your life because if you have, you’d understand just how disgusting and exposed you are making the family feel. These are the things no one talks about because its impolite. Here is the thing if no one ever talks about it how is it going to change? To each person that commented to our friends that the old owner felt the loss more, are you freaken kidding me? Selling something for a profit and pulling your children out of your home in their underpants is not even on the same scale. I’m shocked adults were making the comments they did. Do better folks, honestly just do better, be kinder. We were very fortunate to have been from the small business community that we were from. To have had the people in our lives in which we did. We were met with so much love. We decided it wasn’t fair to keep our shit show at my parents and Tanner had just found his wallet in my truck, thank goodness. We booked a hotel room and set out to get some things to survive with. It was the first time we stepped foot in Walmart in three years, but the children needed boots, coats, underwear etc. Everyone needed everything. Never in my life have I wanted to be somewhere less. Off to the Pet store to get the dragon a cage, and the dogs leashed collars and something to eat. They wouldn’t take any form of payment for it. For those of you that did not know, this company was where I worked for a lot of years previously, they put all differences aside and stepped up for us and our pets in a huge way. We got the children and checked into the hotel. I have never liked hotels. I hate not being in my own bed, I hate strange places, and we are not a family to eat out very much. Living in a hotel means eating out every meal and that was such a strange concept. I should add this is during covid not only do you need a mask everywhere you go, but no restaurants were opened for eat in dining. Never has food in bed been a thing, the crumbs. yuck. I opened my phone to scroll and distract myself only to be greeted by a video by a local journalist/ reporter showing the absolute worst. We had nothing left. Our house was a total loss right to the ground. WE hoped that the fire department was able to extinguish the fire. I quickly moved myself to the bathroom and turned on the shower so that the children wouldn’t hear me crying. To find this out via media really isn’t actually okay. This is somebody’s life. It shocks me the carelessness of images being shared, but also people trespassing just to get the story out there first. Tanner knew something was wrong and followed me in. Now how do we even begin to think of how we tell our children this? We were fortunate our friends showing up to the hotel. Books, toys or things to keep the children occupied, these were the greatest gifts to have been given. The gift of distraction for the children while we tried to sort out the adult problems. Our community came together for us in such a large way. We always tried shopping local before, but let me tell you it was the small businesses in the hotel lobby checking in on us etc. Clients, friends messaging from the grocery store to see if we needed anything brought, or us brought anywhere. We brought the children back home to Cobourg for some familiarity for them, the faces and businesses that was their “normal” to shop at. So, to answer everyone’s question of what happened? There wasn’t enough left of our house for them to be able to determine anything with certainty. We plan to rebuild right on top of the ashes of our former life. And I truly hope as many of you are curious as to the comeback story. The rebuild and repaired. I hope that get shares as many times as our trauma did.