We’ve all heard the saying: it’s just stuff.
And that’s all fine and dandy until it’s you’re stuff that is burned when the apartment you thought was your home turns into an inferno.
Because sometimes the things we own is just stuff, but sometimes it’s a part of us.
A couple years ago, Avery Trufelman did a series of podcasts as a part of 99 percent interest called Articles of Interest about what we wear. As part of that, there was a theme song by an artist called Sasami that still haunts me. The first stanza goes:
A pocket. A piece of paper.
Words from Yesterday.
There’s a portrait
Painted on the things we love.
That haunting tune has been running through my head as I think about the things that were loved and lost.
Because that sweater? Wasn’t just a sweater. It was a remembrance of high school. That tee-shirt? A gift from a friend not seen for the better part of a decade.
And the computer can be replaced, but it held a story that has been worked on, off and on, but mostly off, for at least a year now. It held pictures, downloaded from your phone that you knew you should back up, and you were planning on backing up … someday.
And sure, the TV was just a TV, and can be replaced by a new one a few inches bigger and a few hundred dollars cheaper, but there were DVDs in the collection that are out of print and the chance of finding again are slim.
And the pets? Oh, the pets. I say that nobody was hurt in the fire, but there were lives lost. And having had pets die on me before, I know just how deeply we connect with them. I am not a dog owner, I am a dog daddy. They are family, and to be told you can’t go back to rescue them? My heart aches just thinking about how the people who lost pets must feel.
But even for the ones who didn’t lose a loved one, I know that, over the next few days, they are going to be suddenly reminded of an item—maybe valuable, maybe just a knick-knack—but something that represents a memory of a life lived, and it’s going to gut them once more as they remember what is lost.
There’s a line that I’ve heard used by historians and archaeologists that goes something like that: how old does something have to be before it stops being junk and becomes historical?
When dad went into a home a number of year’s back, my sister was tasked with going through his stuff and figuring out what to keep and what to chuck.
At the end of it all, I got a box of stuff to remember him by. Some of it was clothes. I still have a few pairs of his socks, for instance.
Some if the things in there were things that resonated with me. I had made him a book about his beloved dog twenty years ago for instance, which now I have.
But much of what was in there? Had no meaning. To me, it’s…well, stuff. To him, I am sure, it had deep, personal meaning, reminding him of his now-dead wife, of his beloved dog, of friends who I maybe never met, fossils of his life that, when taken out of context, had no meaning.
Earlier this evening, I biked down to the ESS reception centre to ask them some questions, then biked home down Spruce. That road is the better part of 400 m from the fire, and I could still find blackened chunks of debris, cast by the fire.
And I couldn’t help but think what would have happened if one of these chunks had found just the right place to land? What if it had sparked off another fire in somebody else’s home?
And that, more than anything is what is keeping me up tonight. It’s four in the morning, and I’m still processing. I didn’t even live there. It wasn’t my stuff. But, like most people who live here in Tumbler Ridge, I know people who did. People who are now wondering what tomorrow holds for them. People who collected these memories and memorabilia and held it about themselves like a blanket.
And I wanted to say it’s okay to hold what seem to be contradictory ideas in your head. To say “it’s only stuff,” while at the same time mourning what is lost. Wedding albums, kids’ favourite toys. Love letters and birth certificates and both sets of keys to the truck in the parking lot.
And safety. That’s lost too, for some. It wasn’t just an apartment, a condo, it was a home, and for many, home represents security and safety and comfort, and now that has been replaced by trauma and grief and self-recrimination and questions of “what if”.
Yes, stuff can be a representation. A token of a memory. But when the stuff is gone? The memory remains. Yes, there is pain as the symbol is lost, but the meaning—hopefully— is more powerful than the symbol itself.
I haven’t worn a wedding ring in the better part of two decades, but everything that ring stood for: my love and commitment for my wife, the unity and shared lives together? That is still there.
But the ring? Honestly I used to love the tone I would get from it while tapping the metal stair railings and I kept breaking it. so rather than keeping repairing the ring or replacing it, I have internalized it.
Sure it means that all those single women think I am single and keep hitting on me (stet), but whether I have the ring or not doesn’t change my relationship with my wife one whit.
(Yes. Ha ha. Funniest thing you’ve heard this year.)
I don’t know all that was lost but for some I know it’s devastating. And I don’t want to minimize your loss. I can’t even begin to understand. I want us as a community to stand beside you and support you.
But in the end? It is just stuff. And what survives is far more important. Lives, loved ones, and the memories those things represented which can’t be touched by fire.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
