Is this home? It doesn’t feel like home.
I’m in the same place but not the same house. That house no longer exists except in photographs from another life. I remember the death of my home more than I remember the life it once held.
My home died one stormy summer night when a huge wind came and blew it away.
I had a home and then I didn’t.
The memory of that one night overshadows the memories of all other nights.
We got home late that night.
Sharp, blinding flashes and instantaneous thunder announced just how close this storm was as we drove across the open plain. Mythbusters said being in a car in lightning was ok, I told myself as the rain pounded rivers down the windscreen and the wipers tried to keep up.
The wind wasn’t too bad as we passed through the hills. A few leaves scattered about, but no trees or branches blocking our way. We arrived home, put the car away, and hurried inside, out of the storm. Into the only home my kids had ever known. Our small cosy home on our own piece of land. We were safe inside, relaxed and secure in our shelter, never doubting its protection.
Not long after, in fact minutes before midnight, there was a sudden ROAR, a deafening BANG, and all the light disappeared. No warning, no heads up. In a matter of seconds, we were no longer safe, no longer sheltered.
Scrambling around in pitch black, we tried to work out what had just happened. The lightning caught up to the storm and rapid flares started to illuminate our missing and broken roof, the collapsed front walls of our home, our shattered windows. The inside was now open to the outside.
The devastation was devastating. Safety and comfort had become vulnerability and chaos.
The next day, in the daylight, it’s unbelievable. Things like this only happen to other people — people you see on the news — not to ordinary people like us. But we now know it does.
We reviewed the damage, alongside the sightseers and emergency crews and insurance assessors. Our home is mangled, lifeless, unliveable. There’s no coming back from this.
Our home is no longer our home. We were alive but our home lost its life protecting us, like the hero in a novel.
Our home was dead.
I still thank a god I don’t believe in for placing us all in the right place at the right time that night. I’m grateful that my son left home a few weeks before. I still get chills remembering the broken and splintered wooden beams lying exposed and fractured where his bed used to be.
I remember a lone cup of tea sitting, cold, on a blue kitchen bench now open to the sky. A crushed television lying beneath a wall, presided over by a bare wall that, just yesterday, was covered with pictures. Daylight bright in my small office where daylight had no right to be. Smashed bookcases doing double duty, hugging their books and holding up crippled roof beams at the same time. And so much roof insulation that no longer had a roof to contain it.
For weeks after the disaster, I remember being manic. I had to do, not think. Everything had to be done fast and immediately, right now. I drove fast, I thought fast, I walked fast, I talked fast. I couldn’t slow down because, if I did, I’d have to think about what had happened and that would make it real. I didn’t believe I needed to grieve. It was only a house.
But it wasn’t only a house. It was my home, our home. I didn’t realise at the time but, that night, the wind also blew away my sense of safety, of connection to this place. It blew away a past that I can only now see from the corner of my eye. If I try to look directly at it, it skitters away like a frightened horse.
The storm left caches of things all around our paddocks and I salvaged what I could, gleefully showing my family the things I found. The placemats my mother had sewn for me, all except one — I still wonder what happened to that. A broken picture frame with parts of a torn and sodden poster. Bridles and halters and horse rugs. Wheel nuts and nails and screws and tools. Roof tin wrapped around branches high in trees where it had no right to be.
Finding things was the only positivity amid the overwhelming negativity. It slowed me down and eased the despair that was always there just under the surface. Despair I never outright acknowledged.
We decided to defy nature and rebuild. As the months went by, I watched the skeleton of my home being pulled apart, bones discarded like trash. It was now just a thing that had to go to make way for something new.
There is no longer any physical evidence our old home ever existed. No grave, no sign, no recognition of services rendered. Our new house sits in the exact same place as our old one but it’s not the same.
A new house opens up so many possibilities. Did we want a new one exactly like our old one? No, we decided. Let’s expand, get more space, even though there are less people living here now.
My old home was small but warm and cosy and big enough for our family. My new house is large but cold and impersonal and too big for just two.
My old home had children and visitors and birthdays and celebrations. Twenty years of memories. Now the kids have gone and we have no visitors. My new house struggles to feel like a home.
Old photos show good times and smiles and past events of an era that doesn’t feel real anymore. New photos show a house but no emotion, no memories, except of that night.
The existence of our new house is a constant reminder of our old home. The home that died.
Five years on and I still keenly feel the death of my home.
Nature has bounced back but I don’t think I have. I have a house and somewhere to live, but I still feel the loss and the grief of that night. I still don’t feel safe. I have yet to restore the connection with this land I once had.
I try to give my new house the benefit of the doubt, give it every opportunity to feel like my home. But it’s not there yet.
I didn’t just lose a home. I lost a part of myself that hasn’t been replaced. I’m restless, withdrawn, my attention is frayed, and I hear every breath of wind outside.
I don’t know if I want to live here anymore.
I wonder if any place anywhere will ever feel like home again.
I wonder if anywhere is safe anymore.
