Emotional Purgatory

Floating somewhere up above.

I was in Santa Cruz when the fires broke. 

Adriana sent photos of the yard—embers raining down from a black sky looking as though it would open up and swallow the house at any given moment. I booked her a hotel for the night, 40 minutes south, then made plans to cut my trip short and return home the next day. I did my best to answer questions about what she should throw in the car, which wasn’t much, as I’ve grown less attached to things over the years and only really cared about the well-being of our animals. A friend sat beside me, bearing witness to my phone call, and said to me, “Really? No guitars? Not a single piece of gear?” I didn’t care. I was both numb and raw, a combination I didn’t previously think was possible.

We were down one. We started the week with five, but by 9 am on Sunday morning, our pack had slimmed to four. Chloé had taken a turn for the worst overnight, and we knew it was time. We arrived at the vet before they opened their doors, parked out front, and huddled with Chloé, soaking in every last second. 

The vet was kind and spoke softly, reviewing our options. But they weren’t really options. X-rays and CAT scans would not give her the strength to survive whatever surgery they would reveal would be required. She had beaten cancer, giving us 2 more years beyond what the vet told us we’d have left with her, but her back legs and her lungs begged for rest. The vet told us we were making a fair decision. A strange choice of words, but she’s only qualified to make medical assessments, not moral ones.

My flight to Santa Cruz was later that same day. Adriana insisted I had to go and made sure I knew it was okay. But it wasn’t, as I woke the next day feeling like I had a hangover, despite having had nothing to drink.

I buried myself in work, checking all feelings at the door. I smiled and laughed through the social functions I was obliged to attend, and I think most of it was genuine despite being on autopilot.

Then the fires broke.

Having gone through it once before, there’s a game you play when a natural disaster approaches. You pool the information from the news, advice from friends and neighbors, and past flirtations with death, then weigh that against your gut and make a decision on if and when to bolt.

But I wasn’t there to collect and compute the data, so I begged Adriana to get out, as our house was less than 2 miles from the nearest evacuation zone.

I flew into Long Beach, worried that any change in the winds could cancel all flights heading out of Burbank or LAX. My driver called to tell me he’d be late. He’d just completed another airport pickup and drop-off with a man who lived in Altadena—a cinematographer who left a project in London to return to his family who were waiting for him on the curb in front of the heap of ash that used to be their house. 

I’d spent the whole week in emotional purgatory—responding to texts from friends checking in, only able to relay what Adriana was witnessing, feeling I was neither here nor there, but instead hovering somewhere above the events of life, unable to feel their weight. It was as if I knew that all of it would be waiting for me when I returned home, like it was packed in the suitcase, and I’d watch it slide down the chute to the carousel at baggage claim, feeling its weight as I yanked it toward me. 

I dragged the suitcase through the door and saw the space in front of the coffee table where Chloé’s bed used to be. After a long embrace with Adriana, I went to the bathroom, glancing out the backdoor on my way and seeing the ramp I’d built for Chloé to descend to the grass with her stiff and feeble legs, wondering what I’d do with it now. I returned to the living room, where I’d left my suitcase, staring at it, not ready to do so just yet, but thankful I had a home to return to where I could unpack everything.