Tragedy

The past 24 or so hours still don’t quite compute.

Went to see the movie The Butterfly Effect with my sister and her husband.  At first Dan wasn’t going to come, but then he decided to, so that meant they would take Samantha to my parents’ house and drop her off when they picked me up.

I thought the movie was really good.  The main premise was being able to briefly relive short pieces of your past, in order to try to fix things that have gone wrong in your life or your friends’ lives.  It deals with something we’re all familiar with -- wondering "what if I had done this or that differently..." and wondering how that would change the present.  I won’t give away any of the main plot elements, but one small-ish example is that the boy’s dog is burned to death by some sadistic kid, and you hope that he can find a way to undo that.

A few people I talked to about the movie thought that Ashton Kutcher couldn’t play a serious role (because apparently he was in "That 70s Show" which apparently wasn’t serious).  I think he was very good in this movie.  I also think the movie made good use of special effects, which were infrequent and minimalist.

It’s obviously not realistic to be able to relive pieces of your life, but the things he tried to change were exactly the kinds of things you’d want to change if you could.  The kinds of things that after they’re fixed, you’d be like, "Man, I’m so glad that is set straight now."

I also think they tied things together nicely as it moved along, and at the end.  And the ending was sorta sad, sorta happy, which I think is good.  It will probably upset some people because it wasn’t quite what they wanted to happen (like me, a little) but it wasn’t really bad, and it definitely wasn’t one of those "Oh yeah right" predictable/unrealistic endings.

At 9:32 on the way home from the movie, my brother called us to tell us that my sister’s house was on fire.

We arrived to find something like 7 fire engines and probably 50 firemen shooting water into the house.  Smoke filled the sky and tears fell and it was terrible.  All I could think about was the dogs, and I think that was about all that my sister and brother-in-law really cared about too, at the moment.  Once the firemen had most of the windows broken I realized that the dogs would be barking and crying and jumping out if they could.

A lot of the first floor caved in to the basement, but the kitchen didn’t, probably because it had a tile floor, unlike the rest of the house which was wood-floored with carpet.  And somehow the kitchen managed to be almost untouched in general by the fire, unlike the rest of the house which was completely destroyed.  Kroisie and Stokie were eventually found lying on the kitchen floor.  They probably suffered little if at all; carbon monoxide is surely much more merciful than fire.  Tasha said they just looked like they were sleeping.

Those dogs were so beautiful and amazing.  I didn’t know Stoklos as well, but Kiraly had so much personality.  When he was younger, for some reason, he would charge at me if I just looked at him a certain way.  I still have the hooded sweatshirt with a torn-and-sewed shoulder from one of the times we played.  This is just so immeasurably sad and they weren’t even my dogs.  I feel so sad for Tasha and Dan and Sam.

It turned out to be old wiring in the basement ceiling that started it.  They left to pick me up for the movie around 7:15; Brian and Allison happened to drive by about 7:45 and noticed lights on in the basement.  There were no lights on in the basement.  It must have been shortly after that a neighbor noticed smoke coming out of the house and called our mom, and sometime soon after that another neighbor tried to get the dogs out, but couldn’t see because of the smoke.  By 8:30 or so the fire crews were arriving.

Nick and I watched it for a long time, with lots of other neighbors and lots of firemen, while they poked at windows and shot water in and maneuvered an extendable truck-ladder over the roof.  We found Tasha and Dan and other family/friends again across the street, and stood with them for a while.  The fire was surreal and ironic in the freezing cold with a foot of snow on the ground, and the water freezing on the street soon after they pumped it out.

We eventually went into a neighbor’s house to warm up and to wait.  When we all eventually left around 1 am, most of the smoke/smoulder was done, but they were still on the roof shooting water down into the little house.

There were a lot of what-ifs in everyone’s words and thoughts.  What if I hadn’t made the comment that I had nothing to do after dinner; then Tash wouldn’t have suggested that we go to a movie, and they might have been home, and might have been able to stop it before it got out of hand.  What if Dan would have decided to stay home instead of going to the movie.  What if Brian and Allison would have stopped when they were passing by the house.

If someone were home, they might have been able to stop it, and maybe the poor puppies would still be alive.  But then, what if that person had been taking a nap when it happened, or had tried to stop it but got hurt or killed in the process.  That’s the problem with the what-if process: anything that you change in the past is going to have other effects that you can’t predict with certainty.  (That was a central theme of The Butterfly Effect.)  The other problem with the what-if process is that what’s done is done, and there’s no use trying to blame yourself because you failed to predict something which was unpredictable.  Grieving is  necessary and important, but blaming yourself is not.

That little house was so perfectly decorated on the inside, because my sister and her husband are amazing at that kind of thing.  They had lush new carpet -- only a week old, in some rooms -- and the best furniture and Longaberger baskets and perfectly-colored paint (also new) on the walls.  My brother had tiled the kitchen and the floor under the woodstove.  The bathroom was brand new.  They just put so much time and love into it, and it was perfect.  I hate to see all of that destroyed like this.