"What are we doing?" I asked my Nana as we made our way out to her blue Cadillac. I can still smell the leather interior inside that car, they always kept it in the most pristine condition.
"I just thought we could spend a little bit of time together." She replied.
But I knew my Nana very well. She was one of the only ones in our family who understood just how I felt from experience as far as our mental health was concerned. I always felt this certain kind of connection with her – and I knew the way she was replying to me... something felt off. But if you knew my Nana, you also knew not to question her.
"Oh. Okay." I mumbled, still knowing something else was happening behind the scenes that I didn't know about. At the time, we lived in a small neighborhood that was directly across from the school – so it didn't take long for me to figure it out.
Growing closer to my house, on Cinco De Mayo, it didn't take me long to put two and two together, deducing what was currently happening.
Our home... was engulfed in flames.
It took the fire department over half an hour to get there – but it was not their fault. In fact, the fire department was incredibly helpful in ways they truly didn't have to be. Miscommunication in several different ways factored into what played out. Emergency services were called, but the 911 call first went to our district. By the time they realized it was our county that needed to be contacted, it was then redirected there. Once they realized it was our hometown and not the actual town that our county was under, they misunderstood when told "behind the town nursing home," instead thinking it was the nursing home itself. Just a lot of different unfortunate factors went into play that day.
But once the fire department got there – they went into full gear – at full force. They pulled out all the stops and worked relentlessly and tirelessly to put that fire out. Again, it had taken over half an hour for them to even get there – so you must imagine those flames just growing and growing out of control.
You never realize how much you appreciate those services until you need them yourself. My Momma's first question upon her arrival to the scene consisted of just five words – but they made quite the impact to a young, impressionable me when I heard. "Did you get the dog?"
The two words uttered by the fireman she was speaking to – made an even bigger impression... "What dog?"
One of the firemen I recall specifically, was the dad of one of my fellow Girl Scouts in the troop I had been in for almost three years. He was the one who found our dog in a corner of our living room – trying to get away from the billowing smoke and even went above and beyond by attempting CPR on him.
It was apparent that it was too late by that point. I was utterly devastated. As previously mentioned, he was my little companion. My brother was very young at the time so his response, you may or may not be asking was, "That's okay. We can just get another one." His mentality on that whole thing has changed since then.
You gotta hand it to them, though. They tried. It took a while, but they finally got the fire controlled, and eventually fully extinguished. And even when it was apparent that it was too late for him to be resuscitated – they still tried despite that. The one who attempted CPR on our dog later retired and began helping at the local funeral home. He also ended up helping us out with my grandpa recently when he passed away.
The cause was electrical, appearing like a squirrel or some other critter had gotten into our attic and thought our wiring system was an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Don't worry – I still love squirrels and other critters – sometimes a bit too much, I take that after my Nana. I don't hold anything against them.
Whatever the squirrel in question did to cause the wreckage... I'm sure it didn't mean to.
That's my take on it... and I'm sticking to it.
It hadn't burned to the ground completely, but on a scale of salvageable, it was in the negative red. My cousin, who also worked for the fire department at the time, ended up leveling it out in a training exercise a week or so later.
We did get to walk through the debris after it was deemed safe to do so, though. We got ahold of some garbage bags and went through the rubble of what was left to our memories. We were able to find a few things here and there that we could save, small things such as smoke-damaged family photographs and the like were taken with us in the car. We left the trash bags full of the bigger things we managed to salvage where the remnants of what used to be the front door before we left. We went to get something to eat and just took a break from it all for a bit.
You remember when I said to always be kind because you never know what battles others are fighting? The same goes for not adding salt to the wounds... the metaphorical fuel to the fire, so to speak, for those who are already going through it.
When we returned to the scene... the bags were gone. They had been stolen.
Who – like, seriously... who the hell does that?!
Adding insult to injury – residual charred bits of what was left of X-rated magazines my dad had stashed in the house rained down on my neighborhood like confetti, littering it for months after.
The things that go on behind closed doors come into play with this one. I remember a lot of unexplained absences with my dad growing up to this point. Turns out, there were explanations for them... just not ideal ones.
Let's just say my dad had an appetite for more than just alcohol, and my brother and I honestly would not be surprised if we had some half-siblings out there that we know nothing about.
I'll leave it at that.