Fire Diaries Part 2: Museum
What does it mean?
It’s no secret that the hardest, most stressful part of this has been watching my grandparents go through it. I lived in that house for 29 years. They lived in theirs for 48.
My grandparents’ house was the family’s watering hole — where we spent every Thanksgiving, countless birthdays, and so many ordinary-but-special family gatherings. The soul of that house, the memories we made there, will live with me forever… but at 85, they didn’t deserve this.
My grandpa’s a bit of a pack rat — I say that lovingly. If he’s curious about something, he’ll find an article, print it out, and slip it into a plastic sleeve. He kept everything. And now… it’s all gone.
My grandparents aren’t the most social people. Their home was their safe space, their sanctuary — and it burned. My dad’s childhood home, his family home, burned down in the same 24 hours.
The museum of their lives burned to the ground. And yet, the things that mattered most to them weren’t valuables — they were relics of their parents. My grandma lost her father’s Bible and all of her mother’s handwritten recipes. All my grandpa wants to find is the key that sealed his father’s coffin.
These weren’t just objects. They were connections to the past, to their childhoods — to the people who made them who they are.
So much loss. It makes me sick to think of all the history, all the pieces of my family’s story, that we lost that night.
It feels so strange to exist without evidence of your past.
Love,
The Swan