Up from the Ashes

Preface:

"Oma, we prayed last night that somehow in the ashes you would find some treasures."

Just hearing of this child-like faith brought tears to Kathy's eyes, and her voice cracked on the phone as she thanked her ten-year-old granddaughter. None of the six grandchildren had been there the night before as their grandparents's two-story home was in flames and collapsed into a pile of smoldering rubble. Had the young girl seen the blaze, perhaps she would have known that her child-like prayer was asking for a miracle.

Days after the fire and that phone call, I shared with readers here that only the garage survived--which was a huge blessing since both of their cars were inside. On a more sentimental note, I shared that all our historical family photos from our own mother's attic were also in that garage. This meant that our parent's wedding book from 1951 was saved, but sadly Kathy's own wedding book from 1975 was in the house and lost in the fire.

"Your photographer would still have the negatives," I reminded her. But no. She had tried to locate him decades ago, and his business had been closed without a trace.

It was in that same conversation, she told me (in her "glass-half-full" way) that they spotted the quaint little stove in a corner of the basement, and she took surprising joy in knowing it might be salvaged. She had helped Mom pick it out years before, and Mom had promised it to her "when she was done with it," as parents tend to say in their later years. That is why the once-charming cream-colored stove has meaning to my sister.

Now on to story Kathy shared with me this morning....

"Up From the Ashes"*

Most of us cannot imagine the heart-wrenching work involved in the aftermath of a house fire. It's a daunting task veiled in a grief that is something short of sorrow. Oddly enough, the mind becomes absorbed in the tasks of filling out forms and meeting with claims adjusters and shopping for essential things. The pace of it all makes two weeks feel like one. On top of that, Kathy tends to "process" well into the night only to resume early the next morning. Strangest of all were the times when she woke and for one fleeting moment it felt like the horrible fire ordeal was just a dream. If you've ever been in such a cycle, you know how it feels when your tired days and nights begin to blur like a water-color painting in the rain. That is where the story of the thirteenth day begins....

*************

Kathy stood at the doctor's office check-in window as the receptionist explained bluntly that she had no appointment and could not be seen.

"But I do have an appointment," Kathy explained, "I just got the reminder-call last night."

"No. That call was made two days ago. Your appointment was yesterday. We're totally booked today."

The receptionist did not mean to be curt. It was just a fact, and the full chairs behind Kathy and the bustling office in front of her confirmed it. Kathy had lost a day in the fog of the week and the realization blanked her face. She was too tired to be upset but too busy to reschedule.

"I'm willing to wait," Kathy sighed. "Maybe someone will cancel."

"It's your time. No promises...But as you can see, we're short on places to sit."

Too often it's on officious days with packed schedules or long lines or cramped quarters--those days  when empathy is most needed--that mere efficiency prevails.

Kathy found a seat at the far end of the waiting room. She rested her eyes for some time, and was about to doze off when a kind but unfamiliar nurse stood over her.

"Come on, Kathy, I can take care of you right now," the nurse whispered with a smile.

As the two of them walked past the check-in window, the receptionist apologized. "I'm sorry, Kathy, I didn't know about the fire. No wonder you lost track... We've created an opening."

Kathy thanked her and followed the nurse down the narrow halls of closed doors to one that was open. Only when the door quietly closed behind them did this unexpected conversation begin.

"Kathy, Do you have a niece named Emily? Over in west Michigan?" The nurse asked. Kathy nodded. "Is her husband a pastor?" Kathy nodded again, too puzzled to ask why her niece more than 200 miles away had been mentioned.

 "Well, my daughter goes to your Emily's church. They're good friends. She was over here for the holidays, of course, and on the night of your fire, your niece sent my daughter a text asking her to pray for you. That's how I knew about the fire before it was on the news. Kathy, I've been praying for you for two weeks, and we've never even met 'til now." The nurse introduced herself, skipped the handshake and went straight for a hug. "How are you doing?"

And that quickly, Kathy was too choked up to speak. It is so much easier to keep a brave face when others don't know what it's masking.

It is possible that you, like that nurse, have never met Kathy or her husband Jack, but you have also been praying for them. In fact, I have reason to believe this is true for hundreds of readers here. You are part of an unfathomable network of people navigating uncharted waters with two strangers who suddenly feel like friends in need. It is for you, as well as for the people we do know, that I am compelled to tell this story within a day of hearing it.

As Kathy left the doctor's office that day, she got a text from Jack. He had met with the insurance people and the two inspectors from the fire department, Luke and Roger. These two men were there the night of the fire, and they had been there like guardian angels every time Kathy and Jack had to go to the site.

One of the tasks this day was pulling down the unstable chimney for safety sake. With a coming ice storm and weeks of anticipated snow, they knew it would be harder and harder to search the ruins. They knew this day may be their last chance, so after pulling up the little stove, they looked around as best they could. Jack's text informed Kathy that they had also found a few other things and put them in the garage. The last part of the text read: "All done here. The others just left. I'll wait for you in the driveway."

[Here I need to explain something: If you look at this picture, you'll see why two weeks passed before any thought was given to the little corner upstairs by the shingled roof of the breezeway. It had been a reading room / sewing room, located right over the small study (mentioned in a previous post) where the roll-top desk had saved their passports.

Well, if you look in this close-up of the same picture, you can see the clump of blackened timbers (walls, roof, and ceiling) that seem to be held up by a fragment of floor. That  pile of rubble and ash had gone unexplored for lack of a stairway.]

Kathy was now driving from the doctor's office to the site and made a hands-free call back to Jack. "Are they really gone already?" she asked. "I wanted to be there to see if they could check that little corner upstairs."

"Luke did check that area, Kate. They used a ladder to get up there, but it's not like he could walk around. He did the best he could. Hey... they found that big family Bible, Kate. I was going to tell you that in person. It's charred black. We're not sure about the binding, but the inside pages seem readable. There's some other stuff, too. That praying hands sculpture is kind of ruined but not broken. That old tin of buttons was near your sewing machine. The machine was totally melted, but the tin cleaned up pretty good. Oh, and they found some old snapshots in a melted plastic file tha...." Jack's voice stopped mid-thought as her call lost signal. Kathy waited at a red light.

Mom's button tin. I'd forgotten about that, Kathy thought to herself. It was a multi-generation hodge-podge of buttons in a tin from the 50's. Many were from our grandmother's button jar, dating back to the Great Depression.  Coat and collar buttons from the war years.There were also newer buttons in the mix, but on the rare occasions when she needed a button, it was sorting through these bits and pieces of four generations that made it fun to find the one that might just do in a pinch. Sitting at the light, she remembered the sound and weight of the tin in her hands, and it made Kathy smile.

What thrilled her most, however, was the fact that  they found that Bible. It has been in our family for over 150 years.

It was the kind of Bible too huge to carry--made to rest on a strong table or stand. The cover was made of ornate wood covered in leather worn thin through the decades. It took two hands to open, and in its front pages have handwritten dates of long-ago weddings and deaths from our family tree. (She would later learn that it would need to be sealed in an air-tight case to hold in the smell of smoke.) She was so happy to hear it survived. perhaps because it had been in an enclosed glass bookcase.... And if that Bible survived, she thought... maybe... just maybe.

She was afraid to say aloud what she was hoping.

The light turned green. Kathy hit redial, and after the re-connecting ring picked up, Jack said, "Wherejago? I kept talking. What did you hear last?"

"Something after the Bible part, but Jack..." she pleaded toward her phone, "Jack, can you have Luke and Roger come back? There's one more thing I need them to look for up there in that corner. It was under the chaise lounge."

"Honey, that chaise lounge is gone. The whole room is just a pile of burned roof and ceiling. The poor guy could barely get around up there."

"But did he look under that lounge?"

"Kate, I don't know. I wasn't up there. They were afraid the whole thing was going to cave in. Luke had to wear a harness and Roger held the rope. But if they knew you were on your way here now, I know they would have stayed, and I know they'd come back if you really want them to. That was the last thing they said when they drove off."

"Please, Jack, ask them if they could please come back. I'm halfway home." Strange that the word home still came so naturally for a house no longer there.

When Kathy pulled into their horseshoe driveway, Luke and Roger were already setting up their tall step-ladder again, careful not to let it lean on the weakened wall. Jack met her and walked her toward the things beyond the open garage door. Kathy saw the old Bible, and her heart sank. It was black, and even from a short distance, she could smell the wretched smoke that made it so.

"Will the Bible air out do you think?" she asked Roger, who was holding the bottom of the ladder for Luke as he harnessed up.

"I'm afraid not," he said. "Any material that is not consumed by the fire just soaks in all the smoke like a sponge. Imagine the smoke-house effect of all those hours, and it's not just wood smoke--it's a toxic combination of all the other stuff that burned. If you touch any of those things, you'll have to wash your hands a long time to get rid of that smell."

Kathy just nodded, remembering how Jack's gloves had to be washed twice after simply handling a few items the week before.

At the top of the ladder, Luke climbed through the broken window again, assuring Kathy that he was happy to do his best if she would just tell him where to start looking for whatever it was.

"It's a gold box--not real gold just gold cardboard. I think it was under the foot of a chaise lounge where I read in that room."

The fireman said nothing, but the words "cardboard" and "box" made him feel hopeless in advance.

Kathy continued her instructions from below: "The box was under the end of the chaise, and the foot of it faced the center of the room... so you might want to start near the center of the room."

Only two corner walls remained of this space that was now a gauntlet of sorts. Finding its "center" was a challenge. They could hear the dull, heavy sound of charred timbers being carefully hefted aside. Then some black fabric and stuffing fell from the window. It was upholstery.  "Was this the chaise lounge?" Luke asked as another large clump of soggy material dropped to the ground.

"I can't tell, but if that is near the center, that must be it. The box was under it," Kathy explained again, but her voice faded as the absurdity of her request hung in the air. She remembered that the spot she was describing was only a few feet from where the charred Bible had been...and it had been behind glass. What chance did this box have?

Luke stepped to the window to take a breather. "I can't lift this couch-thing or see under it. There's too much other stuff on top, and it's falling apart... so I'm trying to dig through it. To be honest, I'm not sure it'll work, but I'll keep digging."

Luke stood framed in the window looking down. His face was blackened by soot and ash. His gloved hands were just as filthy. Kathy was about to concede to him that it's no use, but he smiled and stepped out of sight again before she could speak. More wet stuffing dropped down as if to assure her he was making progress.

The look of lost hope on Kathy's face prompted Jack to step closer. From his pocket he showed her a cute picture they'd found earlier in that melted file. It was of her at age three.

"Here, Kate.  There are more over there on your mom's stove." It was an attempt to lighten the moment as the unseen activity in the upper room was drawing to a fruitless end.

Kathy looked at the snapshot from 1955 and smiled. It was an unexpected treasure. Looking past herself and the cake, she remembered the Formica table and matching chairs were once new, and the roaster stand which had been a wedding present in 1952 was sold at the estate sale in 2010. All those things had been in our childhood home for decades, but they were gone now, and life went on. "It's all just stuff," she sighed, a reminder she had thought to herself many times since the fire.

[Here another explanation about fire may be in order: Have you ever dropped a paper cup in a campfire to see it burn up and leave behind the perfectly shaped ashes of the paper cup? Somehow the thing holds its shape even after its been consumed by fire? I've watched the ash-shadow of such a cup keep its shape until I touch it with a stick, and then poof its gone. Well, what I am about to tell you must have been something like that.] 

"Okay, Kathy," Luke shouted without coming to the window, "I think I see a box, but it's not gold. I'm afraid, it's burned to a crisp. It looked like a box... until I touched it, but it's just falling apart."

"That's okay," Kathy shouted up to the window. " You tried, Luke. Thank you for trying."

Roger prepared to switch from holding the rope to holding the ladder so Luke could come down, but no one came to the window.

What Kathy could not see was what Luke strained his eyes to see in the hole he had dug through the stuffing. He had tried to lift the box-shaped thing, but like the paper cup in the campfire, it had disintegrated. The lid had crumbled in his hands. The sides likewise crumbled. Only the bottom of the box remained somewhat intact. That is... the bottom and what had been above it. And that was the thing he was straining to see, and once he saw what it was, he slumped to the floor to gather his composure. He could not believe his eyes.

There in the that black corner of two walls full of melted shapes and charred timbers and drifts of ash where carpet had once been, Luke knelt down, took off his sooty gloves, and carefully picked up the only thing of it original color in the room. He blew away the ash and saw the thing was brown. It was leather. It was bound like a large important book. The page edges were gold-leaf, and each page was still perfect. He slowly walked to the window and held the object over his head as if it were the Stanley Cup.

"Is this what you were hoping to find?" He asked, as if he didn't know.

Kathy saw what he held and burst into tears and uncontrollable laughter. Between sobs and deep breaths she just kept saying "Thank you, God... Thank you, God."

Luke descended the ladder holding his prize safely in one hand and he then handed it to Roger, "Here, you give it to her. I'm a mess."

Roger was speechless. Jack was speechless. Kathy was crying, trembling, and blowing her runny nose. She shook her head in disbelief and finally took the object in her hands.

It was their wedding album from 1975. Her furrowed brow seemed to ask "how?" She held it to her nose. There was no smell of smoke at all. She opened each page. Not a smidge of smoke or scorch of heat. How could that be? she thought but then remembered the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:27). She did not say this aloud, but that was her very thought. It was nothing short of a miracle.

She was still unable to form a complete sentence or utter anything other than "Thank you, God" which gradually became a simple "Thank you" directed at the two men standing before her.

Luke was a bit choked up himself. "I couldn't believe it," he said, "The box was destroyed, it crumbled away when I tried to pick it up, but this... well, it is literally the only thing in that room that wasn't black. At first I thought it must have been the wet stuffing that saved it--but the room was on fire and caved in by the time our hoses doused it. That's why the box burned. How it survived I'll never know."

"Thank you for coming back," Kathy said between tears. "I just had to see if it was there. Until today, I thought every inch of the house was gone."

"It was, Kathy," Luke said. "All but that mess up there, and it's barely holding together."

Roger added, "We should knock it down before the next heavy snow."

 "I can't believe it," Luke said again. "That's literally the only thing in the house untouched by the fire--not even singed."

"And no smell at all," Kathy said again holding it again near her face. "I thought it was gone. I've told everyone it was gone. I need to call my granddaughter. She prayed we would find a treasure, and today we found my mother's button tin, our family Bible, these praying hands, this picture, and now this: our wedding book."

She handed the book to Jack, "Our wedding book, Honey. It's a miracle. You know it is. This is a miracle. God saved it..."

Jack put his arm around her, unable to say a word, and gave her a kiss. A tear slid down his cheek to his chin and dropped down on the open page of the picture of his bride. Jack wiped it gently away, and Kathy took the hand in her own and kissed the dampened fingers.

"Up from the ashes," she smiled. All else blurred in her brimming eyes.

*************

This is their wedding book exactly how it looks now. (The photo was taken at the friends home where they have been staying for more than two weeks.)

*************

*"Up from the ashes" is a literary allusion to the mythical Legend of the Phoenix. Since ancient times and in many cultures, the story of the phoenix (or "firebird") is one of renewal, new life, and multiple "second chances," for it is in the death of the phoenix in a fire that the bird is born again, and up from the ashes it takes flight to begin again. A similar metaphor is echoed in Isaiah 61:1-3, which says, [The Lord will] "...give them beauty for ashes and the oil of joy in place of mourning...."

On December 29, 2019, the morning after the fire, Julie and I stood singing in the worship service in our church in west Michigan. We were struggling with the news of the fire as we sang two praise songs that make use of the "up from the ashes" metaphor: "Resurrection" and "Raise my Hallelujah."  (The chorus proclaims: "Up from the ashes/ hope will arise..." It's a refrain that replays in my spirit ever since Kathy told me this true story.)

In hindsight, the fact that our church sang those two songs the morning after the fire (in a church that had not yet heard about it) strikes me as no more coincidence than hearing of a praying nurse who served Kathy without an appointment or of this wedding book being protected in a crucible of flames.

One of Kathy's four brothers,
Tom Kapanka

© Tom Kapanka, Janyary 12,, 2020: 169,970