Six Months After My Last Post Kitty Died in a Fire

I wrote this blog two and a half years ago. It feels like a lifetime.

Six months  after my fur-family getaway, on the morning of December 28, 2012, my very precious black kitty was killed in a fire that took every one of my possessions in five minutes - everything except my precious dog, Loverboy and the clothing I was wearing.  

Losing BabyBoy on vacation was foreshadowing.

A Day Seared into Memory

Here’s what happened:

I awoke that morning to fire alarms. Kitty was sleeping on my shoulder, Loverboy between my legs. I seized BabyBoy, called Loverboy, and grabbed BabyBoy’s leash and ran outside. Except, he wiggled away as I was trying to get the leash on him and ran back inside. I was afraid of Loverboy following me back in to rescue him so I quickly tied him on the fence, but the firemen had arrived by then and wouldn’t let me go back inside to rescue BabyBoy. In less than 5 minutes, the house was engulfed in flames.

If I could live five minutes of my life again those would be it. Instead of taking Loverboy and BabyBoy out the front door, I would have taken them out the back, threw them in my car and drove away. But honestly, I never imagined a fire could engulf a building so quickly. I thought it would be contained to my neighbor’s condominium.  Stupid me didn’t know 100-year-old buildings were tinder.

Two days before I had moved in my family’s heirlooms. My Mom, who said a prayer for BabyBoy when he was lost up north, became ill a month later after my vacation. She cared for my frail father, who was stricken with congestive heart failure in August, 2012. The stress caused Mom’s memory to disappear and dementia to take over. By September, they were both in nursing homes. By October, Mom was in the highest security mental institution in the region. She died at 3 a.m. January 31, 2013; a little over a month after my fire. Dad died four months later almost to the day. I was there to witness both and their last breaths will stay with me until mine.

The fire not only took my precious kitty, it took every card and letter my mother and father sent me, every photo, every memory in physical form.

I cannot afford to look back, but I have little to look forward to

It hurts to write this.

I have learned to not look back. The loss is crippling and I can’t be crippled. I am still very much alone and need to take care of myself.

Fortunately, though, after the fire, I was not very much alone, I had a whole community rallying around me. But, time goes on and the notoriety fades in a few weeks. I am just grateful the support was there when I needed it.  Within two days I had a new place to live: an apartment that overlooks a beautiful lake. I had an abundance of clothing and furnishings.  (Granted, 90% of it was stuff people were going to take to Goodwill anyway, but I appreciated not having to shop for everything.)

It took almost two years to settle with insurance companies. The woman who started the fire was very mentally ill. We had been trying to get government intervention for a year before the fire, but she had not done anything criminal so they refused to help. We tried to enlist her family but they wanted nothing to do with her. Suddenly, however, when there was an insurance payout involved, they wanted to be her guardian! Imagine that! They held up insurance payouts for well over a year.

It pains me to know if our government and her family had remotely given a damn before the fire, I’d still have my home, my physical memories, and my precious, precious cat.

But there is no going back. No rewinding of life. All I can do is press forward.

I am grateful I am almost done with my life. It just hasn’t been enough fun. Not by a long shot.