Fire and life ❤️
By: Shilpa Joshi
Tags: Faith, Faith and Life, Gratitude, Fire, Fire Fighters

About 2 months after fire this is what stayed. The dishwasher where fire started was just next to it. This cabinet fell down during fire.

One year to date last year, we had a fire at our home. I was out of the house at 6:30 am that day. A colleague needed help to host her broker tour due to prior commitment. So I went super early to work to finish my pending work and then headed in Los Gatos hills to host the tour. Little before10 am I got call from my neighbor, “Shilpa, there is smoke coming out of your home and fire fighters are already on the scene.” That 17 minute drive home was the longest for me. From the car I called my husband to check where my daughter was…she would have late start sometimes…the older one was already in SF, I had checked on her earlier…my brain was running faster than my car..I clearly remember the relief I felt knowing my little one was safe at the school. The day that started just like normal turned into something unreal. “These things happen to other people” type of day. I was first one on the scene from my family. As I reached the bottom of the small hill where my home was, I looked up at the sky..no smoke…good, I remember thinking. I knew it had to be bad, after all, when someone else sees smoke it has to be pretty late. As it turned out we lost everything we owned in that fire. As a poetic justice another realtor who had come to see the home which was on market in front of my home had seen the smoke and had called the fire department. As I approached my home at least 8 firetrucks had peppered the small street and zoned it off for cars. Breathless and but not yet in tears I ran home, not sure about what I was going to see. The townhome was still standing…thankful. I had never seen those many firefighters before. They were swarming in and around the home like bees. Fast forward, thankful to them; we could save precious photos and memory items for the kids… We waited at least 2 hours as the firefighters fought the fire and the home was cool enough for us to enter. The home was filled with smoke. Fire had started in kitchen, started by a defective dishwasher as we found out later. My beautiful white kitchen was gone. As I moved forward to where my Shrine for God was, I stopped. It really was a disbelief. The fire had literally stopped as it came near that.

In the aftermath that followed, all I saw was how my close friends stood by me and how they helped me settle in my new rental 3 days after the fire. And how my faith remained strong and how life really stayed the same…it did.

We kept going to the home first few weeks into it, to salvage the valuable memories. On our last trip to the home before final demolition (home had asbestos, it was declared a hot house so that is why even though the fire was not all consuming, everything had to be thrown out and demolished) I went back sort of to say bye. It was third week of June by then. As I went into my kitchen one last time, I saw the sprouting onion… right there in the middle of all the destruction… sprouting and strong. That was all the sign I needed to keep going and keep believing. I was surprised how no one had noticed it before.

The last one year went well. We have much smaller place now and home is still not done. Everyone who hears about it wonders how I am still standing strong even after losing everything. I smile, knowing all I really lost was extra. I remember the moments when I was scrambling to find out if my daughter was home, she would have earbuds and door of the room would have been locked. Some people say oh, but you will get a brand new home. That is true. Much nicer even. But I don’t feel like sharing how I want to touch my kitchen utensils, I was collecting those for 26 years and it had my grandfather’s bowl, the one he used everyday and which I could not locate even after searching for it several times. It was a life altering moment. The one where you enter on end and come out on another, much stronger and much thankful. One thing it taught me… “ you think you have time”…trying to live fully more than before… it was a wake up call.