Ashes

On our way back from our annual Easter gathering at a cousin's house we drove past the wreckage of the fires. It had been about ten days since the wildfires swept through Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, destroying acreages of national forest and catastrophic property damage. Over 25 individual fires broke out across the valley as result of unusually high winds bringing down transformers, coupled with low spring humidity. Wind gusts were up to 80 miles per hour, making the fires’ spreads swift and unpredictable. My parent’s rural neighborhood, where I was raised, was particularly affected. Thankfully there was no loss of life, but six homes were totally destroyed, all within a mile of my childhood home.

Mom drove slowly past the remains of foundations, pointing out trenches dug by our neighbors with tractors which kept the fire from spreading. Woods at the other end of my parents gravel road displayed charred scars marking just how close the fire had come to making my parents homeless.

A quarter mile away an old church in a grove off the main road — an idyllic small white building with a steeple— stood in triumph surrounded by stoic trees with scorched bark. The church was saved through the efforts of the fire department and volunteers, but it was evident how narrowly the church was spared.

As the fire and word of it spread many friends and family let us know they were sending out prayers and well wishes. It certainly seems now their requests were heeded, by God or whatever great force/s in the universe are responsible for honoring those requests.

If only anything were that easy.

A few days after the fires Mom had shared a post on Facebook expressing gratitude for the luck of her home being spared, and for the hard work of the people who contained the fire from further spread. A family member was quick to point out that she was blessed, not lucky. This rubbed both my mom and myself the wrong way, though we didn’t discuss it at the time. We realized our shared difficulty with the sentiment while driving around on Easter Sunday- the implications of the phrase hit upon some core wounds.

The problem with adhering to this standpoint of God is Good, prayers were answered - is that six neighboring families still lost their homes and belongings. What of them? Did they not have enough people praying for them? Were they themselves not deemed righteous enough by the forces granting mercy? What separates the blessed from the unblessed?

After she’d safely evacuated (under orders) on the day of the fires I talked to Mom over the phone and she recapped for me the home’s belongings she’d retrieved in haste before departing, after first rounding up her three pet cats. Both of my parents are historians, which has put them in the position of guardian of family and local heirlooms, artifacts, and photographs. When my dad eventually got to the house he used every precious second to retrieve as much history as possible while police ushered him to hurry. No house should ever burn down, but their house in particular has a lot to lose, and in the aftermath, a lot to appreciate still having.

“I didn’t get Katy’s ashes,” Mom expressed, “but I guess it doesn’t matter, they are already burned.” I don’t think she said to be funny, but I laughed heartily at the dark humor. Laughter has always aided our grief.

Six years ago today my sister died, following an exhausting battle with alcoholism and her mental health. Two weeks prior to that I had held her trembling hand in church while the pastor and others laid hands on her, praying- at her request- for sobriety. These weren’t our first prayers. I and my family and those we trusted to carry our secrets had been praying for this, with urgency and desperation, for years. And yet, she didn’t get sober. She died at the age of 29, on the other side of the country from us, her veins full of vodka and Valium.

My parents and I have witnessed in the last six years since many who’ve gotten sober - and we’ve looked on with awe, genuine happiness for those affected, and honestly some jealousy. Which isn’t to say we don’t understand the enormity of the battle, or feel guilt about the jealousy, however founded. But the question sits on the edges of our tongues - what do those families possess that ours lacked, that they should be so fortunate to observe their loved one overcome their demons? Why does God answer prayers selectively? Was my sister not deserving of God’s mercy? Was my family not deserving of seeing my sister live a full and healthy life? To grasp that it was a matter of being blessed or not blessed, it’s alienating from God. And so it is luck, we say, that spared my childhood home from the fire.

Luck - and only luck. Because to label it a blessing dismisses those who were not as blessed. I’m not arguing that there couldn’t possibly be a divine order to things, but it’s haphazard at best - putting some though hell and blessing others, with no obvious distinction or merit. We can’t direct blessings any more than we can change the direction of the wind or make someone else get sober. All we can direct is what remains among the ashes after someone you love dies or your house burns to the ground, and that’s love. It can’t be extinguished by death or flames or time, and in those moments when the earth seems to stop spinning there somehow becomes even more of it. Love going out in forms of prayer and hope, love felt as hugs and tears, love lifting up in support for the grieving, love fanning the flames of hearts in memory of what’s lost. It is there that we find the blessings.