Debrief

I noticed a lot of things when I was home over the last few days about my family and the town.
One thing that is great about rural towns is that when there is a crisis people jump out of trees to help out. That's certainly what happened when our house burned down last Thursday week.
I arrived a week after it happened and people were still approaching my parents offering help in various ways, just amazing to watch.
In a way I wasn't surprised as they are reasonably well known through a few different avenues.
Still, it was great to see and it really does give your faith in people a boost.
I can't imagine how it was for my family who had around one minute to get out of the house or put themselves at massive risk.
Dad handles it by joking about it which I don't think is that great, Mum's more visibly affected an she has become quite touchy about power points being turned off at night.
My sister has, more than anyone else, taken the loss of things harder than the others from what I've seen. She was more attached to photos and other items. My nephew is a bit jumpy about fires which isn't surprising. We were walking to the shop last night and when he saw smoke coming out of a chimney he started calling out about a fire in that house.
As far as I'm concerned, I still don't really know how I feel about it. It was surreal walking through the house and seeing it as basically a shell.
Unsettling is the best way to describe it I guess. I haven't lived there for more than a decade but I guess it was always home. However, as time went on after I left home all that time ago I liked going there less and less as the house appeared to age and became less comfortable to live in. Even to the stage where from a few years ago I was telling mum and dad that they needed to upgrade their living situation. From then I guess I became more detached from the house.
If there is a good thing to come out of it then it is that my parents will be able to build a more modern and more livable home.
The house is being demolished in the next week but I reckon it will be Christmas at least before they have a new house. In the meantime they are living in a rented property which isn't bad but they don't see it in the same way.
I was trying to tell them that a home is not a house it is the people, but perhaps it's still a bit too soon for that. And perhaps it is a lot easier for me to see it from that perspective right now.