Maggie's Newsletter

Dear Readers,

As most of you may have already heard, I suffered a tragic loss on the night of February 21^st.  Due to an electrical malfunction, as far as the investigators can tell, my house caught fire while I was out for the evening.  My dogs, that intrepid, wacky pair you’ve all gotten to know through my posts about them, were trapped inside.  Wrinkles, the English bulldog, was 14 and probably not long for this world.  She apparently never woke up from her nap and died quietly from carbon monoxide, right where she laid, in her spot in the little bathroom, on her blanket on the floor.  There was a pale outline of her blanket left amid the soot in that spot.  Sally, the great Dane, was eleven, and while her health was beginning to decline rather alarmingly, I thought she had a couple of good years left.  She too died from the smoke, but in her case she ran upstairs first, but only made it as far as the doorway of my bedroom before she was overcome.  It must have been fast, and that gives me a bit of relief from the horrible thoughts of my poor pals trapped in that horror.  Not much, but some.

The house itself, my beloved Serenity, is very badly damaged, but still standing.  One wing, the part that was once a large attached garage, but was converted to a bedroom by the former residents, and an office by me, survived nearly intact.  The entire rest of the house will have to be completely gutted and rebuilt.  Only the frame and partitions will go untouched.  Most of the furniture, most of my clothes, all of my artwork, many of my sculptures and statues and collectibles, countless books and decks of tarot cards, all my coats, many of my shoes and boots and sneakers, my laptop, my printer, all my phones—I mean, just look around your room where you’re sitting right now, and basically everything you see is something that burned.  I lost a lot.  I’d have rather come home to a hole in the ground, though, than to the loss of my dogs.

Still, one has to move on and it’s been two weeks now.  I hopped around for the first week, unable to make any decisions or even think very clearly.  I stayed with one daughter, then another, then my closest companion, and then another daughter, and so on.  I had only the clothes I’d been wearing.  I borrowed some.  I washed my own and put them back on.  And every day I went back to the house determined to “do something” and ended up just wandering through the rubble and shaking my head, overwhelmed and unable to even figure out where to begin.

By the end of the first week, the shock began to wear off.  My friends chipped in to buy me a new laptop.  My BFF Michele took me to the mall, and my local writing pals all joined us for dinner.  I got a few clothes, the computer, some essentials.  I met with the insurance people who assured me I was very well covered for everything, and would be fine.  I met with the disaster-clean-up crew who began helping me go through the house, and sort out what we should try to save, and what was hopeless, and guided me through making lists of all we tossed away, for the insurance claim. 

I found a gorgeous Bed & Breakfast called Alice’s Dowry only 10 minutes from my house (www.alicesdowry.com) and I booked a room for two weeks.  I sorted through the clothes the “experts” had deemed a total loss and managed to save some of them.  Jeans, mostly. 

Mainly, I turned my attention from what I had lost, and how much there was to be done and dealt with, to how much I still had.

My office, and its contents were mostly unharmed.  And I had a lot of stuff in there.  My new elliptical, my Bowflex, a few clothes, a lot of books, all saved. 

My “Cleopatra” bathroom, attached to the office, with the double sinks and huge lighted mirror and jacuzzi tub, was completely undamaged, aside from a little smoke.

My house is still standing, and none of the outbuildings were damaged.

My kitty, Glory, survived by hiding in the basement, thank goodness.  She’s fine, though shaken.

My Iphone, my prized possession, was with me at the time, so it’s unharmed.

But more importantly, I’m still intact.  I’m still me, I’m still leading a charmed life, I’m still focused on what’s good and feeling happy most of the time.  I know the things I lost are just things, and things can be replaced.  I think how lucky I am to have homeowners insurance, and I think about others who are less fortunate and lose it all and have no policy to cover them.  I think about how I still have more than a lot of people I encounter every day.

As the contractors began the demolition work, I went to the hardware store and bought myself a crowbar and a mallet and I joined them.  I’ve spent the second week since the fire, doing brute physical labor every day—tearing down sheetrock, and pulling up carpeting, and ripping down cupboards, and pulling nails and insulation, and lugging all of it outside to a Dumpster, which we’ve now filled three times.  And this is the BIG Dumpster, the kind that fits on the back of a truck and is the size of the dump box on a dump truck or something.   It’s been exhausting, and I ache all over.  Keep in mind, I sit on my butt for a living, mostly.  But it’s been incredibly therapeutic.

The contractors think they can get the office wing cleaned, wired, and sealed off, and that I can then move into that part of the house and use it as an apartment while the rest of the place is rebuilt.  It has its own bathroom and its own entrance, so it should be perfect.  I plan to pick up a mini-fridge, some temporary area rugs, a microwave, and a new desk for that part of the house.  I need a new mattress for the futon in there too.  If all goes well, by the end of this, the third week since the fire, I’ll be back in the house again.  And if all goes well, by the end of this, the third week since the fire, the demolition work will have been finished, and we can begin the following week by starting the reconstruction.

Already, I’m getting excited about it.  When we ripped down the living room ceiling, we discovered the original ceiling was far higher, and I intend to restore it to its original height.  As we tore sheetrock off various partitions, I noted that by removing the tiny bathroom where Wrinkles used to sleep, I could  add a lot of space to my living room.  We’ll need to substitute support posts for a load-bearing wall, which means I get to choose decorative pillars, or columns or big hefty barn beams, for a rustic look, or maybe go on the hunt for some custom made totem poles.  The possibilities are absolutely limitless.

When we tore down the ceiling in the kitchen, and over the breakfast nook, we discovered another older ceiling, this one sloping from higher near the living room to lower near the bay window, with evidence of a skylight having once been a part of it.  It’s wooden, with beams showing, and I love it.  I’ve decided to restore that ceiling as well, replace the skylight and add at least one more.

I think I’m going to move the washer and dryer to a more out of the way place, and put a wetbar in where they were before.  (That idea came from one of the workers and I love it!)

Some of these extras I want to do might end up costing more than my insurance coverage.  I might end up using what they give me for contents, to pay the difference, and then restore my contents on my own, over time.  The structure really is what’s important.

I’ve also discovered during the course of ripping things apart, that this house, my “Serenity” has suffered two previous fires.  One was apparently a very bad one, and she had a lot of hidden damage.  One of the workers said he thought he would move, that it was a bad sign.  I saw it very differently. 

Serenity is still standing.  No matter what tragedies have tried to knock her down, she’s still standing.  I like that about her.  I think too, that it’s interesting that it’s only by stripping her bare of all she has, that I’m able to find the even greater beauty all of the paint and plaster were hiding.  I feel an affinity with her, even more than I did when I first found and fell in love with her.  I feel like I, too, have been knocked down pretty often over the past few years.  But like her, I’m still standing.  I feel like one of those children’s punching balloons with the sand weighing down the bottom. You know the ones that look like clowns?  You punch them and they rock over, but bounce right back up.  That’s me.  And that’s my house.  And like Serenity, (and like Inanna in the legend of her descent into the Underworld, come to think of it) I’ve been stripped of all I had.  And I’m pleased to see there’s still something left.  I’m more than my stuff, and I can be as connected, as happy, as content, as positive with nothing to my name and no home to call my own, as I was when I had everything.  That’s a good thing to know.   My connection and my happiness do not depend on what I have, they depend on who I am.  And you never really know that until you lose it all.  As a matter of fact, I feel even more positive and more content and more connected to my higher self than I did before the fire.

I miss the dogs.  I will for a long time.  They still wake me up every morning—I hear Wrinkles little snuffly sneezy woof, demanding to be let out.  Or I hear Sally shaking her head and making her ears flap like helicopter blades spinning.  It doesn’t feel like I’m dreaming it, it feels like a real, out-loud sound, and it wakes me up.  I sit up in bed muttering, “Hang on, I’m coming,” and get halfway to my feet before I remember that it can’t be real.  It’s really tough getting used to not having those two nuts around.

But I know they’re okay.  I know death is just an illusion and that life continues on, and that they’ve re-emerged into oneness with the greater whole, and even with me on some level.  I know they’re okay.  So it’s all right.  And I should miss them and mourn them, because they deserve that.  They were great dogs, fabulous companions.  But I know they’re okay.

And beyond that, I know that I’m okay.  And I’m kind of glad this happened, because I might never have been sure whether my often irritating Pollyanna-positive attitude could withstand testing.  A lot of people probably roll their eyes at my happy tendencies, and think, sure it’s easy for you, you have everything. 

Well, now I have nothing.  Nothing material, anyway.  I even hit a deer and banged up my car two days after the fire!  But I still have everything.  I have my friends, I have people who love me, even the ones who won’t admit it, I have my talent and my inspiration, I have my energy, my ambition, my work.  But most of all, I have my connection with my inner being, my higher self, my Goddess and my God, and the entire Universal Whole of all that is.  I know who I am, and I know, now more than ever, that I’m happy because I choose to be, and because I know that life is good, and because I’m so very glad to be living it. 

What a ride this is!

Until next time,
Maggie

Maggie’s Feel-Good Websites:

www.hayhouseradio.com

www.abraham-hicks.com

www.effortlesshealing.com

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