I don't think there's any wrong or right response, by the way, except I obviously wish people who'd killed themselves had found another way. People stayed, people rebuilt, people moved, people left forever. Some rebuilt and then decided they didn't feel safe and needed to move after all. They're all valid reactions.
Hawkins: How has the pandemic influenced bubble thinking?
Fies: I don't have a good answer to that question except that the last few years have just been one damn thing after another. When the pandemic began, I often joked, "Hey, this isn't even the scariest thing that's happened to me in the past two years!" But then people I knew started falling ill and dying, and that joke wasn't funny anymore.
I do think getting through a disaster can foster some bravado for the next one, like "Fine, bring it on!" Not always productive. But knowing how you reacted in one extreme situation, and having a chance to reflect on how you wish you'd reacted in that situation, is good preparation and practice for the next one. I don't have to wonder how I'd react in a disaster anymore. Now I know. And I know what I'd do different in the next one.
Hawkins: A Fire Story does an excellent job of describing what people lose in the fire -- material and systems and relationships. Can you elaborate on this? And how has the fire altered your understanding of life? The bigger picture"
Fies: Well-meaning people say, "You and your family survived, everything you lost was just stuff." People who mean less well sometimes say, "I wish I'd have a fire to clean out all my stuff!" I want to punch them all in the nose. I write about this in the book: "stuff" isn't just material possessions, it's memories and history and roots.
The fact is, I don't miss 95 percent of the stuff I lost. The catch is that the other 5 percent breaks my heart. We left a car in the garage that melted into a puddle that I haven't spent even a minute thinking about, but I will always miss the first sonogram showing that my wife was going to have twins.
I used to be a bit of a collector. I had a lot of comic books, and antique astronomy books, and shelves of knick-knacks and little things that caught my eye. I'm not a collector anymore. I realize I'm still grieving a bit but I just don't see the point. It seems like pointless vanity to me now. A defense mechanism, I'm sureif I don't collect things I love, then I can't lose them.
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