Breathing in Paradise

Dear Paradise,

It was hard to breathe while you were on fire. For 12 days, the sky in San Francisco was a solid choking curtain of smoke and ash. Even though we are 170 miles away from you, there was no mask or air purifier that could combat the smell of your charred town and its ruins.

We are still watching the numbers roll upward every day. At least 14,000 of your homes lost. At least 85 human lives ended. So much burned. So much left behind. People who couldn’t move fast enough. Pets you couldn’t save. And now it has all become part of the air. 

Years ago, I read that once particulate matter finds its way into your lungs, it is deposited there permanently. This idea stuck with me, that if you inhaled something foreign, it could simply stay imbedded inside you for the rest of your life. And that is what’s happened, Paradise. Your ashes have drifted in all directions. They have traveled thousands of miles. Part of you has become part of us. We have breathed you in. 

Since November 8th, we have been hanging on to every happy ending. Every survivor. Every rescued soul. Every singed cat and dog. We have been donating. We have been buying gift cards and sending pet food your way. We have been crying. And praying. And breathing. In and out.

Your fences, your kitchen tables, your welcome mats, your armchairs, your toasters and tea kettles, your swing sets, your dog beds, your bird feeders, your slippers, the pictures that hung on your walls and the flowers that grew in your yards. Your wood, your metal, your earth. Your loss, your fear, your sorrow. Your bones, your hair, your ghosts. We have breathed in your molecules of grief. And they cannot be exhaled.

Dear Paradise, the rain has been falling for a few days now, and today the fire has been fully contained. I hope you will get back soon to what is left standing. And I hope you will recover from what isn’t. As for the rest of us, I hope we will remember what we have absorbed. I hope we will remember that even when we don’t know each other, we are all connected. We are much more the same than we are different. All flesh and all fragile. And we are all in this together.