Part 2: Disaster strikes

in a sneaky, boring, ordinary, sad little way

Dear readers… Please remember to hit the ❤️ so I know you’re with me!

Later in the year after our return, we got an email from my sister Bonny’s partner Mark, who maintained our Maui property.

He’d discovered that a refrigerator hose had been leaking under the house. This steady drip had been going on for a year, probably longer. The house was rented to an elderly couple. They didn’t notice the trickle, which was just enough to saturate the soil beneath the house and the cinder block wall of the garage.

“It might be bad,” Mark warned us. “I peeked under the house and could see that the whole garage wall got saturated. Everything touching the wall is probably ruined.”

We had not planned to stay in California long. Because our move was made in haste, we didn't rent a separate storage unit. Instead, we had filled the garage of our Maui house with our best furniture and family heirlooms.

The short time we’d planned to be away kept extending. We bought the Osprey Nest cabin on the River as Mike’s parents passed on. Our children got married. Grandbabies were born. Five years passed with our most prized possessions left untouched in that sealed garage.

Mike and I flew back to Maui to assess the damage. We unlocked the garage door, rolled it aside, and discovered that a lifetime of irreplaceable items were ruined. Books, records, our wedding pictures,  college diplomas, and baby clothes from when our kids were born—all destroyed. The Italian leather couch I’d been proud of. The hope chest with the antique quilt inside.

Master’s in Social Work degree…bound for trash

I’d been so afraid of fire’s terrible toll, but it was flood that had been the destroyer.

By this time, as I said, I had become a minimalist. I don’t keep much and decluttering is a favorite pastime. Everything I own is carefully curated.

That said, the chosen relics of my life had been packed away  when we rented out the house for a time that was never meant to be long. I had always planned to come back.

Being confronted by eroded boxes; warped furniture; and moldy, pulpy paintings shredded by rot to the point of being unrecognizable was a visceral blow. I was battered by memories as I sorted through mildewed family photos and mementos, searching for anything salvageable, hyperventilating through shock as I stacked gorgeous, expensive artwork erased by water damage to go to the dump.

The worst loss was my art collection, which I’d been adding to for thirty-plus years. The paintings, many of them valuable, had been carefully wrapped in acid-free paper and stacked against the cinder block wall. As the wall became saturated with water, moisture seeped through the wrappings, growing mold and disintegrating the art works.

unrecognizable masterpieces from a lifetime of collecting

After I had sorted my part of the ruin (most of the damage was to my personal items, not Mike's) I went back to my sister's house. I was grateful she and Mark were gone, freeing me to be enveloped by a wave of grief. Intense misery threatened to tear its way out of my chest like a hideous clawed beast.

All I could think to do was to let out the pain in some physical way, by moving through it.