Krystal and her family are all “sentimental magpies,” but when the fire came, they couldn’t save much of their beloved collection. “In the end, I left it all behind. A lifetime of over emphatically placing attachment on all of our history and every little item,” she says. “I was saving everything for my family and for my nieces and for my friends, but in the end, I walked out.” Krystal managed to save her baby blanket, one Mickey Mouse photo album that she knew had old family photos and a small album of their family pets.
Krystal is struggling to understand why her sentimental family didn’t take more, and they’ve been struggling with the guilt. In the end, she says that she felt that if she started to pick up objects, she would make it true. “I put them down so I wouldn’t breathe it into reality.” Their family moved into their home in 1978, and it was the center of their universe. “It would always be there, and then suddenly, it wasn’t. Vanished off of the face of the earth before we could even process we had had to evacuate.” Now, Krystal walks through their home in her imagination at night, remembering every single detail. “I’m scared that it will all disappear, just as it did two weeks ago in the fire, and I will lose it a second time.”
Poppy’s bear was the first thing Erika grabbed when she was headed to pick her up from school that morning, before the evacuation call even came.Photo: Erika Fiksdal
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A necklace bought for Erika by her friend and her dog’s tag.Photo: Erika Fiksdal
A baby blanket, a ring, and a necklace
Like her sister, something always drew Erika back to their mom’s house. In fact, she was living back there full-time, raising her seven-year-old daughter Poppy in her childhood bedroom. “She had all of her treasures and all of the things she had collected and painted,” says Erika. “It was a beautiful, magical space. That’s one thing that’s really hard to say goodbye to.” She mourns the loss of Poppy’s drawings and memories, but also worries about the impact of the fire and the loss on her daughter. “She’s going to grow up knowing that she doesn’t have all of the things from when she was a baby. We don’t have any of the family heirlooms. It’s going to be painful for her,” says Erika.
Erika feels guilt at not being able to save more for her family in the fog of survival mode. She did manage to grab some things: photos, her daughter’s baby blanket and bear, a necklace with her beloved dog’s tag attached to it, a ring she had had since childhood and had passed down to her daughter. “It’s like losing two homes in one home. All my childhood, everything my mom had saved, and everything I had started to give to Poppy that was mine,” adds Erika. Like many people, she thought she would be back home soon. While Erika wishes she had saved more for her daughter, Poppy is optimistic. She’s excited to fill their lives with new memories, telling her mom, “I’ll make more art, Mom. I’m the artist.’”
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