Free Falling Into Hell

June 6, 2006 started out like any other work day . I grudgingly got up at 3:30 am , dressed and headed off to work . Upon arriving at work that morning my shift was told that we wouldn't be running that day . So I was sent home . I was grateful for the unexpected day off , we tended to work 7 days a week for weeks on end , so the time off was welcome . So I headed back home and back to bed for some much-needed sleep .
My son and his girlfriend were living with us a the time , she and I were the only ones home that morning . Around 11:00 am my son's girlfriend ask if I smelt smoke ? Unfortunately I did . So off I went looking for the source , didn't take long to find it . When I open the door from the Family room to the garage , I found the garage almost fully engulfed in flames . Quickly shut the door and frantically headed back to the main section of the house . Instructed the girlfriend to call 911 and went outside to see if maybe I could get it under control with the garden hose . Yeah right , well that wasn't happening . Back into the house I went , by this time the house was filling with smoke and I could see flames coming out of the roof of the garage . Grabbed my car keys, cell phone ( to this day, with all the confusion , I still don't know how I had enough sense to do this ) and we headed for safety . Pulled my truck a safe distance from the house and there we sat waiting for the fire department to arrive . Four fire departments to be exact .
As I was sitting there waiting and collecting my thoughts , I realized that our three dogs were still in the house . Any other day they would have been outside in a fenced in area we had set up for them , but for some reason they had come back in that morning . I went to the living room window and pushed the screen in thinking I could get them out that way . But at that point the house was full of a thick black smoke and I could only see about a foot inside the house and they didn't come to me when I called . I knew better than to re-enter the house .
So back in the safety of the truck I sat and waited , for the fire department , for my husband , and for it to all be over . It's sickening to sit , and watch twenty-three years of your life go up in smoke and flames ,and there's not a damn thing you can do about it . This was the first time in my life that I felt truly helpless .
I didn't know it at the time but the reality of it would take months sink in .
The fire companies started showing up about 30-45 minutes after our call . Under the circumstances , this was a fairly good response time . We live 8-9 miles from the closest fire house and there are no manned fire departments local to us . So fire fighters are volunteers and had to be rounded up then dispatched from the fire house . But once they got to us they didn't waste any time getting to work putting the fire out .
Someone from one of the fire departments put a call into Red Cross for us and a representative was on site before the fire departments even left . The Red Cross set us up with three nights at a local hotel , and food and clothing vouchers for the four of us . This was a blessing , because my brain hadn't even gotten to part about where are we going to sleep tonight , or what are we going to wear . The only clothing we had , was what each of us were wearing , and I don't know who's pants I had on , only that they were about 3 sizes to big and I didn't have a belt .. When I left the house I had on a pair of sleeping shorts, a tee-shirt and sandals . Sometime during the chaos , my daughter or someone gave me a pair of jeans to put on .
Once the fire was extinguished and the fire departments packed up , and gone , I made the request that someone go into what remained of the house and retrieve the dog's bodies . I also requested that when they brought them out , that I be somewhere else . I couldn't bear to see them . I somehow felt , and still feel that I could have some how saved them . My son's took care of those requests , burying them some where on our lot . I didn't ask where , don't want to know . Maybe some day I'll ask . It's been 5 years , and of all the things we lost , losing the dogs still makes me cry .
The rest of the day is pretty much a blur . We checked into the hotel , bought clothes, and food . These are things I know we did , but don't have any clear memory of participating in the events . For about a week or so I functioned in a fog .
Future posts will follow our stages or phases of coming back from nothing . The setbacks , the obstacles and resources we found to over come these . Hopefully this information will be helpful to others in the same or similar situations.