“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose.” Helen Keller
Last night, after Thanksgiving dinner at my daughter’s house, my wife showed me a picture of last year’s Thanksgiving at our home in Palisades Highlands. The photo illuminated our round granite table, and the cobalt blue and gold heirloom dishes her mother kindly gave us, resting on a fine tablecloth with napkins and gold holders. The centerpiece, an array of flowers that festooned the table, created an aura in the room we had carefully curated. In the background were our finely honed cabinets and framed paintings, adorning the room, with our saltwater aquarium on the wall, and the room was lit with candles, sending a message of loving care. It was a merry evening, but we had no clue what was about to happen. That our life would change in a click of time.
We have learned many things from the January 7th fire in Pacific Palisades. We worked on that place for twenty-five years, lovingly replacing everything and making it our own. We remember a particular bottle of wine we picked up at a charity event and were saving it for a special occasion. After the fire, we regretted having lost the wine forever. We realized that the special occasion is always now. Never wait to celebrate.
What had not occurred to us was something we all know but somehow deny. That life can change in a split second. We don’t like living that way, but we all need to. We complain about trivial things, like traffic, or about having to sit on the phone waiting for help. Or a vast number of things. We only wish we enjoyed it more than we did, and we did feel grateful. But we can’t take any of that back. We regret what we don’t do the most.
The plethora of stuff we have done since the fire is massive. We managed quite well, but deep inside there’s a hole where our house used to be. In that hole is sadness. Where do we go now, what will make us happy again? We have a new house, and we will not be going back to our old one. We can’t rebuild, it’s too expensive.
In truth life must go on, we must live our best life. People say, well it was just stuff. We know that is not true. Things that we collected from our travels, artwork, family heirlooms meant something to us. We had sentimental attachments to much of it. Especially the photos, mementos, and, of course, the design and creation of a great living space.
The biggest loss is always our sense of home. Thankfully, we were always so appreciative and felt genuinely grateful for our small piece of heaven. We will never have that view, the birds, the fish, the great expanse of the mountains. But the real loss is innocence. That nothing can happen to us, that we were special. We are not special, we are a part of life, and we will experience all the difficulties. We live in another world now. But regardless we must move forward.
The secret is there is no secret, we keep going, each day and find things about it that matter to us. The best part is that we have come together and realized that, above all, we both survived, and that, between us, we can make a new life. Of course, our kitties came with us and although bewildered by the change they do their best to adjust.
The other difficult part is our age. We are not spring chickens and our accumulated possessions from our whole lives evaporated. So, it is doubly complicated to literally start over at this time in our lives. But what comes from this tragedy is a deep sense of humility and an appreciation of one another. It has created a much deeper attachment because we have worked together to rebuild our lives. And in the process a deeper love has emerged.
I bought a painting the other day, something that speaks to me, but I needed to do it because it’s what makes a home for me. It was beyond our budget, but it meant a new beginning, a sense of how art makes a home feel like one. Of all things we need that. We miss our place in the world and want to make a new one.
Tragedy strikes and assaults us all. No one gets out of life without experiencing loss. A family member, a child, parents, partners, and friends. We lose things, jobs, dreams, our marriages, and objects that have special worth to us. That is why it’s so important to value what we have when we have it.
Don’t miss your children’s growing up, moments with your family, your friends, and your places. In that sense, if or when you lose some of those precious relationships and living spaces, you will have lived it fully. So it is with life, live it out because it can all change in a second. Better to live fully than have regrets. You are only here on this earth for a fleeting time. Create a life well lived.