The dark gray clouds was all I remembered that day as a 5 year old girl running around the garden in our old house in Cebu. In the eyes of a child, it was just an ugly dark cloud not knowing that the gas depot was burning a few meters away. I recall the evacuation, scurrying away to the front gate into the safety of my grandma’s car. I didn’t know the gravity of the situation then but I could sense the relief of my parents as we went back to our house. There in the front yard were all our furnitures and stack of boxes. Apparently, my mom stayed behind to pack up some of our stuff and even managed to haul off the furniture. She had the luxury of time to pack up unlike the victims of the Southern California Fires. We were probably lucky because our house didn’t catch fire. Our neighbors lost their homes. We were saved. No one died though.

Losing a home is not just losing a material possession. It’s losing the memories attached to the home. And like any loss, it’s a painful process. There is grief too. Any major event in our lives affects every aspect of our lives. They don’t know what is “out there” or how they’re going to be affected by this change somewhere down the line.

I have a friend who lost her 15 year old daughter in a fire. Unimaginable grief. Inspite of the horror of the tragedy, she chose to rebuild her home in the exact same lot. The loss of a house can easily be rebuilt but the loss of a child is permanent. I am not minimizing the victims who have lost their homes. True, they will face the same grieving process as bereaved parents face but there is hope. There is hope that they can rebuild their lives.

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