Letter to our daughter in Chico

Dear Rachael,

     It must be incredibly depressing to know so many friends, co-workers, and clients who lost everything in the fire.  You obviously can’t help them all, but I know you would like to.

     I probably told you this, but just in case I didn’t…I read that a fire is in some ways worse than a death in the family.  After a death you grieve, but then you move on.  After a fire you lose your whole sense of who you are.  People always say, “Well, we’re alive.  Thank god for that.”  And that’s a good point.  You certainly would be worse off if your parents or your children had died.  Nonetheless, you have lost all those little things that made you who you are–your diaries, your poetry, your school records, your pictures, the records of your trips to Costa Rica and Spain, your address book, your stamp collection–and on and on.  These are things not only important to you, but they are also possessions you wanted to pass down to your kids.  I cannot imagine how hard it must be to lose all of that.

     I thought that the people of Chico might be getting tired of the disruption in their lives.  School closures, over-crowding, people living in tents, battles between long-term homeless and fire victims, and no end in sight.  You mentioned that people at work were behaving inappropriately.  I don’t know in what way, but I can believe that everyone is stressed out, nobody knows what the next few weeks, or months, or years will bring, and then the TV is constantly showing happy people doing holiday things.  

     I could write cliches, like take it one day at a time, or in a few months it will be better, but none of that helps.  I remember going with you and Mark and Gavin to that Christmas tree place you mentioned, and I assume it is all gone, trees, stand, house, and livelihood.  I wish there was some words I could say that would help, but I can’t think of anything.

     Love,

     Father