Tomorrow will mark the two year anniversary that this happened….

As the date has been getting closer, I’ve been getting weird.

Two years ago tomorrow around 5:45pm eastern time, Burke and I finally found ourselves alone with what remained of our home.

The firefighters had left.  There was nothing else they could do.

Burke and I retreated up the mountain, away from the smell of smoldering things, away from half-burned things that I could possibly recognize.

We sat on this rock…..

We were in that space of heartbroken and half numb.
Which is a dangerous place to be.
We were both a fucking mess.

I remember we were holding hands.
After losing all of my physical history – my journals, four generations of family Christmas ornaments that had been entrusted to me, my baby things, the wooden sign with my Grandmother’s name on it that my Grandpa had carved with his own hands, my Grandma’s special jewelry, our stuffed animals from when we were little….
I needed something to hold on to.

I have always had a secret fear of one day losing my memory entirely. I have never said this outloud.

I think that’s why I keep journals. Why I save everything. So that if I were ever to lose all of my memory, perhaps it could be triggered by my writing, or an old stuffed animal, or a favorite book from when I was little.

But in a fire that lasted under 15 minutes, all of that history transformed into smoke and lifted to the sky.

Far away from me.

There is nothing to prove I existed.

But suddenly, sitting on this rock with Burke, looking down at our still smoking house, holding his hand, I had this brief and overwhelming feeling that everything would be okay. It struck me out of nowhere, in the middle of my darkest thoughts…there was this unexplained lightness.

And here’s the odd thing. Out of nowhere, Burke felt it, too. It was as if some unseen force passed by us and lifted our sorrow.  It lasted for about five minutes.

One year later, on April 23, 2012 at 5:45pm, we sat on that same rock, we held hands and closed our eyes. With all of our might, with all of our thoughts, we sent love back to the Past versions of us that had been in so much pain sitting on that same rock a year before.

And this may sound completely insane, but I feel that the unexplained happiness that passed by us for a moment on the day that we lost the house, may have been a simple good thought sent by our future selves back to us.

Does this make sense?

Einstein believed that time itself is relative and that past, present and future are going on simultaneously.

Which means, according to Einstein’s theory, I can send messages back to my past self, and also forward to my future self with awareness and ease, because they are all going on at the same time.

And I do send them messages.

Blue Christian Winterhawk, calls this “holding hands in the darkness.”

There is something oddly comforting thinking that the current me can reach back and concentrate on sending love to the past me and Burke when they needed it the most.

Thoughts can be powerful things.

Tomorrow, when 5:45pm comes rolling by, Burke and I will be there on the rock for a third time.

When I close my eyes, I will let the past me know that the house is almost finished.  That good work was put in it by all of us.  That it was built with love and friendship – by those we know, by those we just met, and by people we will never meet.  That there exists a scroll of names in the wall and in the foundation and marked into the brick of the fireplace of all those who support us and care and surround us with love.

And that everything…

after all of the hurt and loss and sadness

will one day be alright.

I promise.

And I will probably cry for a moment, even though I will try not to.

Like I did last year, and the year before that, on that same rock.

I will think sweet thoughts of the house that once was…

And I will hold Burke’s hand as tightly as I can and I will think good thoughts for the sad couple on a rock two years ago – I will imagine my love washing over both of them to give them a moment of lightness.

I know they will feel it.