Journal after the fire.

Some have asked what the feelings were as we saw the fire. This is a journal entry about a month after because fire does really consume time too.
Please, can you save my words? I stood on the other side of the street, screaming inside. I watched the flames and smoke take over our home. Devour, really is a good word. What do you save when all that you love is standing right beside you and safe? Many memories are stored in cyberspace now and new memories can be forged. Standing at disaster, I wanted my words . No one really knows I am a writer. The pain of the pen is lost, years invested, gone.
A fire fighter came to me, "We have contained the fire enough to retrieve some important items, where and what can I find for you?" He stood tall and helpful though I have no recollection of his features. Things and objects all clumped together. I know now the emptiness of the word things.
I sighed deeply, "I am a writer," it seemed like such a silly question, "my words, can you get them?"
Kevin talked to the fire chief, discussed the details of our attic space for the fires path. All that we owned and worked for was fading, what matters when all is being destroyed? A neighbor came to my side. "Pictures," she said, "think, think, where are they and they will get them." She was persistent and did exactly what a good neighbor should do. She pushed my brain to think. I was overwhelmed but her persistence gave me focus. "Did you have them in a box, an album, where are they?" She was determined to get my mind to think and believe there was hope.
I raced my mind for the household inventory. The last time I walked in my well put together home but a little cluttered. I tried to recall everything, anything. I could have just stood mouth gaping and with no direction but in a crisis it is people on the outside and sometimes those least expected that get your attention and steer you back on course. I am not sure how the triggers of the brain all work together to capture the memories of a lifetime or even a halftime. The mind just works. It works in ways that are truly amazing beyond our capacity of understanding and it amazes us with the outcome.
I remembered the box, the one that never made it to the empty photo albums. (Procrastination sometimes has a positive.) The fire fighters came out with several memory boxes intact and with minimal smoke and water damage. My neighbor was cheering. I felt some relief, but the fire continued.
"What else?" the firefighter asked. I must have looked helpless. Two or three firefighters stood waiting for my answer.
My good neighbor reassured, "He'll get them." I told them where my words were piled. Amazingly they were in the only part of the house that had some recognizable things though colorless. They first came out with a file box of coloring books. I shook my head, "that's not it, Green, one of the writing boxes was green." He turned and went back in. The second attempt brought back a plastic file bin of cooking magazines. I was ashamed for wanting words, and having good men risk carcinogens to retrieve some files that may or may not be worth anything at all. They were just words. But to my vanity of words they rescued them and brought them to the curb.
Words. Why do words matter? Letters fitting together on a page create a new path or an old worn walk, a place of comfort, a note of encouragement, a story written to discover, to remember, to sell. Waiting. I have been waiting for the time for my words to take flight from my own pen. Words matter. They count blessings, they inscribe the details as a child grows, they touch a heart with deep exhaustive bonds. Words can mend, can break away, can pursue a dream that touches a skyline, a shadow, an insects flight. Words take emotion floating in winds, through storms, on places of rest and forthcoming. Words do not fail as they push a page to new beginnings and new realities. As old as the first breath that life contained, when the word became life, it broke ground and sustained the soul for existence.
Thank you for my words.