After the Fire | #79

Jan 12, 2025

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After the Fire

You ever think you could cry so hard
that there’d be nothing left in you, like
how the wind shakes a tree in a storm
until every part of it is run through with
wind? I live in the low parts now, most
days a little hazy with fever and waiting
for the water to stop shivering out of the
body. Funny thing about grief, its hold
is so bright and determined like a flame,
like something almost worth living for.

- Ada Limón, from The Carrying, 2018. Listen to her read it.

Ada Limón wrote this poem after the 2017 fires destroyed her hometown of Sonoma, CA. It’s a poem I keep in my back pocket for friends experiencing grief — I often send poetry when condolences feel insufficient.

I love the viscerality of this poem. I feel its emptiness in my chest, its aching in my eyes. I’m fortunate enough not to have experienced the level of loss Limón is writing about (yet), but “I live in the low parts” still stops me in my tracks. I know that enervated, foggy feeling of grief. I couldn’t have described it better.

The image of the flame cuts through the haze. Ironic, because the flame is the source of destruction, but it’s also the thing that brings back brightness. It’s clarity. It’s almost hope.

—

My hometown is on fire. All week, I’ve struggled to focus, refreshing the Cal Fire maps with their red and yellow overlays on the neighborhoods where I spent my childhood. The sites of countless slumber parties, movie nights, meals, hikes, backyard games, and late night drives. I’ve lived in the Bay for over a decade now, but Pasadena and its surrounding cities will always be my home.

My family is lucky. My parents live south of the highway, protected from the embers by ten lanes of concrete. I’ve spoken to them every day this week, checking in on the air quality, telling my mom where to find my high school journals for her go-bag. But the risk of their needing to evacuate has been low, and so most of our conversations are a back-and-forth of names:

“Did you hear that the Grays…”

“…and the Hamiltons, can you imagine?”

“…also Johnny…”

“…Harriet…”

“…never heard the bullhorn, just saw flames and fled…”

“…just a chimney left…”

“…at least she didn’t have to abandon the car…”

It’s not lost on me that I wrote two weeks ago about the accumulation of things, and the past week I’ve been contemplating what it’s like to lose literally everything. I made a list of what I would take with me in a situation like this, and was surprised to find that it was quite short. Other than practical items like cat supplies and contact lenses, all I could think of to take were my journals, a box of sentimental cards, and some earrings Mark got me for Christmas a few years ago. Maybe my collection of souvenir thimbles, if I had a few extra minutes. I expected the exercise to make me feel panicked, but instead I felt oddly free. I did know what mattered.

My mom has reported a few of her friends also feeling free. One, who was lucky enough to pack her getaway car with family mementos, said she was almost relieved that the rest of her things were gone. No more closets to organize or attics to purge. She’s just shy of eighty and almost giddy at the prospect of starting over.

Of course, this friend (who lived in the Pacific Palisades) isn’t worried about money. As admirable as her equanimity is, it’s founded on significant financial privilege. I’ve seen dozens of GoFundMe petitions circulating for families I know with less of a safety net, many of whom had their fire insurance rescinded shortly before this disaster by prescient insurance companies. Without an income right now, I’m feeling overwhelmed by the opportunities to donate, but then I look around at my house full of stuff and think, how can I not?

I’ve always been a little bit obsessed by what’s left when you take everything away. Grief, I think, is the scariest emotion, and my fear of it coupled with the queasy truth of its inevitability has led to an almost morbid fascination. I consume grief content the way many people binge true crime — maybe if I take in enough of it, I’ll be prepared.

One of the things that fascinates me is the way certain emotions bubble up through grieving. I’ve written about how hope sometimes seems like a self-preservation reflex. Euphoria, too, can rush in after trauma (especially after the adrenaline rush of a worst-case scenario averted). This poem is another version. Here, there is no counterbalance to grief. Grief itself is the reason to keep going.

Last year, I did some work with post-traumatic growth for a nonprofit called Reimagine. One of the core principles of PTG is a bit of a paradox: you don’t have to believe “everything happens for a reason” or be grateful that trauma “made you stronger,” but at the same time, trauma can be a source of profound positive transformation and growth. Bad things can be unequivocally bad, and good things can still come from them.

This poem, I think, captures that idea. It doesn’t minimize grief or loss, and it doesn’t try to hold depression at bay. The hope it offers is complicated — bright, but a little violent, and inextricable from the heartbreak that necessitated it. Grief is the bad thing and also the thing that might lessen the suffering. There’s no end and there’s no right answer, just whatever happens next.

A tree in a storm,

Jess

p.s. There are plenty of ways to help circulating, so I won’t google them for you. But if you’re looking for inspiration, I have made a donation to World Central Kitchen and signed up to donate clothing via Seconds Market (though I may look for other options if I don’t get matched). And these are the GoFundMes (that I’m aware of so far) from families I grew up with:

Poems for the In Between

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