On Fire

Bearing witness to loss

His backpack was abandoned at his feet, crumpled in the grass, rendered suddenly childish and obsolete, for its owner had become something entirely other than a schoolboy who played in the freshman orchestra.

More than two decades ago, I was walking home from high school, probably daydreaming about crossing paths with Henry, a lanky boy with curly hair who played the violin beautifully and was the concertmaster in our small freshman orchestra. He lived just a few blocks away from me in our modest, suburban Oklahoma neighborhood. He always walked a few paces ahead, both of us heading home alone, in silence. These walks had become a little game for me. I was too shy to speak to any boy, especially any I had a crush on, so I would walk and imagine the conversations I’d have with Henry, were we ever to speak. I’d often carry a book with me, sometimes attempting to walk and read at the same time, paradoxically trying to ensure that he wouldn’t talk to me, while also of course desperately hoping that he would, perhaps by asking me what I was reading. Never mind that reading while walking caused me to stumble over curbs and cracks in the concrete. It was a 14-year-old’s logic.

But on this day, Henry was not in view and something else had captured my attention: a column of smoke climbing violently into the air a few blocks away.

I wonder if my house is on fire, I thought. But no, that couldn’t be. The thought of anyone’s house burning, much less my own, struck me as so unlikely and unbelievable that I returned to my book.

But the smell of the smoke became acrid and pungent—real—as I neared its source. It towered against the quiet blue of the warm autumn sky, billowing like a supernatural thing howling upward from the Earth, a force of physics all its own. I felt the truth of it settle into my stomach: someone’s house was burning. My own home came into view, intact, and I let out my breath. I passed it by, kept walking.

As I neared the end of the street, there it was: a house in the process of being ruthlessly consumed.

And then I saw James—another violinist who sat near the back of his section, a quiet boy who I hardly ever noticed, a boy who must have also walked home the same way as me, day after day. He was standing across the street, watching the fire. And it was clear from the look on his face that this was his home.

I don’t remember the sirens that must have been blaring, or the sounds of the fire, or the other people who must have been gathered around. I just remember James:

His backpack was abandoned at his feet, crumpled in the grass, an object that had been rendered suddenly childish and obsolete, whose owner had all at once become something entirely other than a schoolboy who played in the freshman orchestra. He stared straight ahead, unmoving, watching his world disappear. His hands were in his pockets, his shoulders were slouched, his mouth closed.

The things I knew about James began to drift to the surface of my memory: he had a younger brother and sister. His family was not a wealthy one. I had the vague recollection that his parents had struggled for this house, the way my mom had for ours. And thus I understood that it was not just a house, a home, that was burning, but also a monument to what had likely been his family’s steep uphill climb into something like the blessed relief of stability.

Tears ran down James’s cheeks. He was the first of his family to have arrived home that afternoon. He was silent. He was alone. And his silence and his loneliness felt impenetrable, unreachable. The word alone suddenly became a verb, a force, and I felt as though I was stumbling backward.

I came to stand next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder and could find no words to say. We stood there, side by side, and watched the flames.

I can’t remember what happened next. Maybe his parents came home at last, maybe a fireman led him away, maybe I eventually simply turned and walked home.

Not long after the fire, James’s family—having been unable to financially recover—moved to another state to live with relatives. I never saw him again.

“On fire” is a phrase used often these days to describe the state of the world. It’s a phrase that resonates with me this morning, as I’m writing these words: another clear, warm autumn day—more than two decades later, and in a different state. Here in Maine, and elsewhere in the world, literal and metaphorical columns of smoke are rising into the air.

I’ve been carrying the memory of that housefire over the last few days, turning it over in my mind. As war escalates in the Mideast and continues in Ukraine. As Lewiston, a city just a handful of miles north of where I live with my family, endures the world-shattering aftermath of a mass shooting. I keep seeing James standing there in front of his burning house.

And the question this memory has for me right now is: How do we bear witness to another’s unbearable grief and trauma?

James’s silence that day has been with me all these years. Indeed, in that moment he was no longer a schoolboy, nor a violinist, I’m not sure he was even James. Rather, he was a person who had temporarily been stripped of any identity other than something utterly tender and essential: a deeply vulnerable human being.

My 14-year-old self did not know what to do about his grief and did not know how to find the vulnerability within myself to meet his. My 36-year-old self is still learning what to do in response to the fact that relief, stability, and safety are not guarantees.

What I hope for is this: that those of us who are bearing witness to the deep, world-shattering losses of others in this time—within our human societies and within the living world—take it upon ourselves to do the work of reaching, again and again, for our own visceral, vulnerable humanity. I hope that we cling to it. And that we bring it with us as we respond. Whether we are protesting, speaking out against ongoing and unspeakable violence, donating time and resources, or listening and being present—I hope that we uphold this unwavering humanity that recognizes the dignity and worth in others.

I am angry and scared. And even as the waves of fear and anger come, I hope that we can find the courage to draw upon those best and highest parts of ourselves: our compassion, our empathy, our enduring capacity for love, and then make those parts of ourselves unyielding. I hope that we continue to challenge ourselves to recognize thou—not it, not other, not them—in the midst of so much that is on fire.

I’ll leave you with the words of several others that have given me ways to wrestle with what it is to be present and vulnerable and human:

From Anna Badkhen, in her book of essays, Bright Unbearable Reality:

“The great Toni Morrison said about belonging and dispossession and the notion of home: ‘We are dreaming all wrong.’ In this book I examine some of our broken synapses. Maybe we can never make them whole entirely, but we can try to acknowledge and repair them, even if the sutures show, the scars of our efforts to dream differently.”

An excerpt from “I Have Wanted Clarity in Light of My Lack of Light,” in Ada Limón’s collection The Hurting Kind:

Once, I was brave, but I have grown so weary of danger. / I am soundlessness amid the constant sounds of war.

And—because he’s a bit of a fixture in our house at the moment—Fred Rogers:

“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive.”

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