There was a line for the treadmills at my gym this morning. It was 5:45am and there is never a line for the treadmills that early. At first I was puzzled.

What are all these people doing here?

There were people on the treadmills who I never see at the gym at that time. Then I thought to myself…

It’s the smoke. They don’t want to run outdoors.

I live in California and our state is on fire. I live 130 miles from the Camp Fire which is now the most destructive and most deadly fire in California’s history. On Friday morning last week I woke up at 3am not because of stress, or dreaming of my late husband, or because I just sometimes wake up at that time. Rather, I was woken out of my Zzquil induced sleep because my house smelled like smoke. I bolted up in fear.

Oh my god. There is a fire in the neighborhood.

But I did not hear sirens or any sign of chaos.

It must be smoke from the fire near Chico.

I looked at my sliding glass door. It was closed.

Did I leave a window or door open somewhere else in the house?

I silently slipped out of my bed and quietly crept down the hall, trying not to wake my sons or our puppy. I looked in each room. No doors or windows were open.

That’s how bad the smoke was. Even with my windows and doors closed, I could still smell it inside. And I live 130 miles away.

Over the last week the smoke has persisted. There has been a constant haze. The sun is usually some shade of orange. We often cannot see the top of the mountain behind our neighborhood. Schools have cancelled outdoor recesses and outdoor PE classes all week. Tomorrow all schools and colleges in the Bay Area are closed. My sons’ sports practices and tournaments have all been cancelled in the past week. State Cup Soccer has already cancelled the tournament for this weekend. Despite keeping them indoors this week, my sons have had headaches, sore throats, and burning eyes. I did an outdoors swim workout on Monday evening and it was much harder than it should have been. I finally figured out it was the smoke. Last night as I drove home in an air quality of 154, my eyes burned for the first time. The air quality right now is 199.

But I am not complaining. I have no right to complain.

As of tonight, 63 people have died in the Camp Fire.  631 people are missing. The Camp Fire is just one of three (it might actually be four now) fires burning in California. Hundreds of thousands of acres have burned in California. Thousands of structures, mostly homes, have been lost. Fire crews are working around the clock and are exhausted. A small town named Paradise was completely wiped out. Nearly a quarter of the population in Paradise was over the age of 65 and many were not able to escape. The news has been full of harrowing stories of people trying to escape and heroes who put their own lives at risk to save others. As I type this, the air quality in Chico, which is near the Camp Fire, is 433.

So, even though my eyes might be burning this week, that’s not why tears have slid down my cheek more than once in the past seven days. My heart hurts for all the people who have been impacted by these fires and for those who are still in their path of destruction. My heart hurts for the fire crews and other first responders who must be operating on fumes.

I know what great loss is like. I know what it’s like to be blindsided by sudden, unexplained loss. I know what it’s like to be so exhausted that you could lie down in the middle of a street and actually nap. I know what it’s like to be so afraid of the future. I know what it’s like to not know how to put the pieces back together after tragedy.

But I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to literally flee your house, to drive or run down a road with walls of fire on each side. I don’t know what it’s like to decide in a matter of minutes what to grab from your house. I don’t know the pain of having to make the awful choice of leaving your pets to save yourself or your kids. I don’t know what it’s like to have nothing to come back to.

Everyone says that stuff does not matter. I mostly agree with that statement but not entirely. I would give up all of my stuff to have my husband return to earth. But I also would be devastated now that he’s gone to lose my pictures of him, to lose the jewelry he gave me, to lose his down Northface vest that I still keep in my closet. I would be so sad if I lost the box of his t-shirts that I still plan to make into quilts for the boys someday. I would be so sad if we lost Gordie’s Raiders baseball cap.

I have been thinking a lot about the stuff that people lost in the last week in the fires. I bet many of them lost stuff that was all they had left of someone they lost and that makes me sad. I know that many of them are just grateful that they survived, that their love ones survived, that their pets survived. However, someday they will really miss that picture of their lost loved one. They will really miss the wedding ring of their late spouse. They will really miss the picture of them with their Mom. They will really miss the hat that their Dad wore nearly everyday.

Clearly, my heart also hurts for the people who lost someone in the fire. Perishing in a fire seems like a horrible way to die. I feel awful for the people who survived and who are now wondering what their loved one went through in their last moments. Sadly, I know what that’s like. I have always thought that drowning would be a terrible way to die and I still, six years later, cannot stop myself from agonizing over what Gordie’s last moments were like. These are thoughts that I will have until I take my own last breath. I don’t wish that agony on anyone else.

Finally, my heart hurts for California. I moved to California when I was seven years old. I went to college at UCLA. I met Gordie at a bar off Union Street when we were both living in San Francisco. I lived in California for 20 years before Gordie and I moved to Colorado. My happiest moments with Gordie were in Colorado and it became our home but California always had pieces of our hearts. We moved back to California after 13 years in Colorado, not because we wanted to but because we had to. However, California was the only other place we ever wanted to live. When we returned to California there was a surprising sense of coming home for both of us. Gordie died just 14 months after we returned to California. We were not blessed with time to introduce our sons to elements of our California childhoods…together. Since Gordie’s death, I have tried to show our sons pieces of Gordie’s California life and to provide them with similar California experiences.   From hunting for crawdads in Lake Tahoe to eating Italian food in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood to hiking on Mt Tamalpais, to winning a goldfish at the Walnut Festival, the boys have enjoyed seeing the state where their Dad was born and raised.

California is not a perfect state. The traffic here sucks. The cost of living causes me enormous stress. We have too many people who are homeless. It’s hard for California kids to get into our public universities. But California is still magical. Anyone who has gone for a run down Fisherman’s Wharf toward the Golden Gate Bridge at sunrise or hiked along the Pacific Coast on a cloud free day or driven up the coast on the 101 freeway or seen the Blue Angels fly across the San Francisco Bay has experienced the magical beauty of California.

California is my home. It is my sons’ home now. And our home is on fire. I grieve for my husband everyday. But this week I have grieved more for California. My running through grief has turned from running outside through the grief of losing my husband to running indoors through the grief of this massive destruction.

Our state could use your help. The victims of the massive fires in Southern and Northern California need your prayers. Our fire crews and other first responders need your prayers. If you feel led to help financially, there are a number of reputable organizations taking donations. Simply google “Helping California wildfire fire victims” and you will find many options.

#Californiastrong