Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Thanks to the Spokane wildfires, so very many of our neighbors are now faced with the trauma of a lost home. The places where we live can take on a life of their own. As we experience life’s memorable events, the passions and
tensions that we feel cast echoes through a place that never really fade.
This is why realtors must disclose if violent crimes occurred in a house before they sell it to a new owner. While some of us have the sensitivity of a brick, others of us cannot help but to perceive such emotional residue. One need not believe in magic to acknowledge that our five senses do not encompass every capacity for perception in the human mind.
So, for some of us, places are more than merely where we are. Places can be redolent of the past lives that have been lived there. This is even more true of places that we ourselves have constantly inhabited. Houses that become homes develop a character of their own, an emotional weight that can be palpable.
These echoes are the basis for all haunted house tales, ghost stories, and poltergeist myths. They are also the foundation for a cozy family home. Just because our physical sciences have not as yet catalogued and measured psychic phenomena is no reason to doubt that there exist mysteries beyond our current understanding.
For those families and individuals whose homes were consumed in conflagration, it is not merely the familiar keepsakes, furniture, photographs, and prized possessions that they have lost. It is not just the house itself and the surrounding yards, gardens, and trees which have been turned to ash. It is not simply the lost futures which might have been lived in these homes that will now never be. These wildfires have also taken away the past echoes that had accumulated in these homes and neighborhoods over lifetimes.
Those former inhabitants now face a life-changing loss of innocence. The illusion of security, safety, and permanence has been stripped away from the men, women, and especially children who once called these ruined places home. Each will grieve for all of this in their own way.
Pray for those who are enduring this ordeal of traumatic loss! And, be grateful for each of these treasures which you, for the moment and by God’s grace, may still possess.
