Fires rage on

Remember a while back when I requested that you buckle up because this was going to be a wild ride as I process the wave of emotions walking with Dominic through cancer, and a bone marrow transplant? I had no idea then just how bumpy this ride could even get!

Most of you know by now that our house is under threat in one of the worst fires in California’s history.


As Dominic and I were in Sacramento when the fires happened, we stayed in Sacramento to ride it out. So grateful to our several friends who have offered to take us in. We’re currently residing with an old friend from high school who I have not even seen since. But we’re friends on facebook, and I’ve so enjoyed her and getting to know her and have been wanting very much to visit with her. Well. Not this way. But what a treat to meet her girls and her husband and her pets even. Don’t tell her, I am stealing all of the doggies and kitties. (I am editing to say we are now with another friend in Woodland. I will definitely write about this lovely experience.)

I’m still sleep deprived, still delirious, still not eating much. All things I ought to be taking care of so I can take care of Dominic.

I thought I’d try to return home to retrieve what I could. I’d heard my neighbors were going to try.  But just as I was getting out of this completely foreign to me town, I got a call that it’s just not worth the drive. I likely wouldn’t get to the property and my friends, my angels would fetch what I really wanted. Which turned out to be cat number two.

It hit me as I was walking through a Winco grocery store. Ya’ll. We don’t have Wincos in Santa Rosa. I go to tiny little markets so I can move around quickly, get what I need, and get out. I don’t need a thousand options. And I certainly don’t need camping gear. I just need one quality thing.
Anyway, I was walking up and down the aisles and I can’t read any of the signs above each aisle telling me what’s what. Not even squinting. I just can’t see. I realize that I’ve been scrolling or crying non stop for four days. My eyes are shot. This store is huge and I can’t figure out anything. I went in for pineapple juice and before I knew it I needed a cart. It’s not that they had great stuff. It blew my mind how not great it was. It’s just that I couldn’t even think straight. And I realized I’ve had this feeling before. This deep heartsick feeling of helplessness. Sometimes, when you do the most common activities after your circumstances have changed dramatically, the activity becomes over whelming and all the existential thoughts about life start churning. How could Dom and I be facing such great loss again?

I felt a heaviness akin to that which I felt while walking toward my car in the parking lot of the hospital and still not comprehending what was happening after the Leukemia diagnosis. I thought I would lose it in the great big cavernous weird store that was culturally so different from my beloved town, and I just could not. My mother has lost everything, and mingled in her everything are some of my things, things from childhood she kept for me and things she liked so much that I’d inherited from Grandparents and Dad that I let her keep them. I grieve for her. I grieve for me. I grieve for so many.

I see my friend after friend referring to their packed bags by the door, waiting for updates on the fire. This is how Dom and I have lived the past 5 months, bags packed by the door for a fire in his body. Any fever, as you know, could mean a race to the hospital to beat sepsis and even death. I am well acquainted with bags packed by the door.

I plowed in circles returning to places I’d already been, realizing something else was needed for this unplanned holiday. Yet another unplanned holiday in this already overbooked season. I kind of feel responsible for this fire, because as I’ve mentioned before, I lay in bed at the hospital with great concern of what if there is a disaster and Dom and I are separated from family? And that is what has essentially happened. No way to call my Mother for days. Not knowing if her house still stood. Mapping out routes to get to places and having to drive great distances in circuitous routes due to road closures. I wanted her to drive to my house the morning after she evacuated with nothing. No bedding. No treasures. Just her life. She could could not get to my house even if she wanted to. And that is just as well as my house was soon to be evacuated as well. That was a story I read over and over. Folks evacuating to a friend’s only to be evacuated from there. That is how intense and crazy this whole thing is.

Today, Dom and I don’t say it can’t get any worse. We wondered if it could get any worse once we knew he’d need a bone marrow transplant. It could. It did. And yet, we’re okay.

When I pulled up to the Winco, there was an older man in a mobility scooter with a Marines baseball/trucker hat. He looked desperate as the alarm of his truck was blasting, had been blasting the whole time I sat in my car texting updates. I asked if he needed help, and he asked if I could help him. He’d locked his keys in his truck. I called Triple A and sent for help. I asked if he’d already done his shopping and he hadn’t so I sent him in to do that. I waited next to his truck and someone approached me with the hustle. The woman who had just so tenderly offered to help one man realized she was done. Toast. “You need to get away from me now” I told the hustler. I don’t even know who I was just then. My adrenaline was racing and I knew I just couldn’t.

Then the man in the scooter arrived back and we chatted for about 5 minutes before the help truck arrived. He said he he was so happy I was helping him because he didn’t feel well and needed to get home. Oh geez. I stepped back and said no offense, my husband is receiving cancer treatment that makes him very vulnerable. He cannot get sick right now. Then the man told me he has COPD. Oh….okay. He told me his throat hurt, and I said it’s because of the fires. What fires? He didn’t even know my town, my world is on fire. I told him how bad it was and that my mother lost her home and that he should be indoors because the air is toxic, even out here in Sacramento. He said he didn’t know what he would do if I hadn’t helped him.

I don’t even know if I should have helped him get in his truck and drive, as he pointed out the red paint on the side of his truck where he swiped a pole. He was sad about the scratch. Then, I watched him park his scooter on the lift and painfully moved about securing it. Every movement was through molasses. And I took his groceries for him and watched him walk to the driver side door using the body of the truck to assist him. I’m not sure if I did a good thing or not today……

My two cats have been rescued and are being cared for at Caroline and Brad’s. I’m so relieved they’ve been scooped up. One was rescued the night I barely slept. The night Brad and Caroline went back to the ranch to grab a few things because it did not look good at all. The night we were awakened to news our house stood.
The other was rescued yesterday and very chatty about his adventures. I’m so grateful to have my boys at least.

We’re not out of the woods. Winds are still a huge threat….and well…when is anyone ever out of the woods? I mean really? This life of ours…it’s precious. None of us knows anything about what tomorrow may hold.