I have almost forgotten the day I lost my family. Public records and a small article in the local newspaper have filled in what details I cannot remember: September 29, 1999, house fire reported at 6:03 a.m. Cause unknown; no survivors found. What impressions remain to me are few and vague—searing smoke, blazing heat, deafening roar, terror, darkness.
I remember running in the chill of early morning, blindly sprinting away from hell. My socked feet grew numb from the dew, but I continued to flee until I stumbled into the park four blocks away from what had once been my home. I huddled, shivering in the semidarkness as the cold seeped into my bones. All I could smell was ash, and I felt the breeze burn my skin like licking flames.
At that point in time, nothing existed for me. The sun rising over the trees, the rumble of cars on the road, the blare of sirens—all of these things must have been present, but they do not appear in my memory. I saw blackness, I heard white noise.
Perhaps I sat motionless in that park for hours; when I emerged from my stupor, there were people all around and the sun was high in the cloudless sky. What had called me out of the darkness was an old woman crouching before me, reaching a bony hand toward my shoulder. Her hair was as white as mine, as white as the thin pajamas I didn't know I was still wearing. Her face and voice are indistinct now, soft, but I know that she was real.
She urged me to stand, murmuring a question; I crumpled in her arms and she gathered me to her bosom. I sobbed into the crook of her neck, hugging her torso as tightly as I could with my weak arms, while she stroked my damp hair and silently rocked me. If she whispered words of comfort to me, I could not hear them. She smelled like bread, not like ashes or charred wood. I gasped and cried until my throat was raw. When I was spent, she lifted me as easily as though I had been a rag doll, and the last thing I remember is the warmth of her lips brushing my forehead before I slid into the oblivion of sleep.
That day, I was neither untouchable nor unshakeable, and out of all the pain I suffered, that weakness may be what I most want to forget. If I can erase from my mind what it feels like to have another person's arms around me, then I will not dwell on what I have lost.