250 Words on Closure

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

Seven years ago this week, wildfires throughout California devoured thousands of homes and neighborhoods, including mine. It’s an apt time to reflect.

Seven years can feel like a day or a lifetime ago. Sometimes it’s as if it all happened to somebody else; other times, it’s painfully fresh. Karen and I and our friends, neighbors, and community handle day-to-day life just fine, but the PTSD is real and you never know what’ll set it off. Something as subtle as a rumble in the distance or a warm autumn breeze makes the hairs on the back of your neck rise.

I still walk into rooms and reach for light switches that aren’t there. Karen and I still look at each other blankly and ask, “Do we have that thing, or did we used to have it?”

Sometimes people ask about “closure,” but in my experience there’s no such thing. There’s just your old life that’s gone forever, and your new life that began that day and continues to build. That new life isn’t much support or comfort when you’ve only lived it a few days, but after seven years you’ve built enough new experiences and happy memories that it has some weight to it. A new foundation in a new land.

I’m not even sure closure is something to be sought. The jagged seam where your old and new lives collided will never be smooth. Why should it? We survived a hell of a thing. Now it’s a part of us.

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