The easy answer: a house fire. Our house in New Jersey burned, not to the ground, but if it were a car it would have been totaled: the amount it would cost for us to repair was more than we could sell it for. We thought we were going to rebuild anyway so we paid to totally strip the house to the studs, dumpster after dumpster of burned wood and plaster followed the dumpsters of our burned possessions, and then more filled with smoke- and water- damaged wood and plaster. The plaster old enough to contain horsehair, covered with layer upon layer of wallpaper each holding secrets from the history of those who lived in the house going back to the 1860s and expansion in the 1890s. Once, years before, someone knocked on the door and asked if he could show his kids the house because he grew up there. We said of course (my husband recognized his name as that of the previous owner) and as he carefully moved a cabinet to show them where he had made a crayon drawing on the wall we all exploded with laughter to realize it was still there. So many stories like that.

It is hard not to be sentimental or dramatic and I was very selective about the images I included here. Some I rejected because they were too personally harrowing; others I feared would be too much of a trigger to any readers who have seen that devastation first hand. These are enough to remind us of the destructive force of fire and what we could have lost. We survived unharmed, as did the cats, and every day I give thanks for that — I know people who really did lose everything and for a few very long minutes after I listened to a voice mail message about the fire from my neighbor’s son, I thought I had as well. My heart breaks for those who might recognize too much.

So here are some descriptions instead. Piles of half burned things all along the upstairs hallway and nothing but charred wood and burned books in the room where it started. Pictures with the top half of the glass melted and the bottoms unscathed, the wallpaper burned from above that same smoke line, and untouched below — exemplification of why they tell you to crawl along the floor to escape a fire. Smoke is hot enough to melt glass, but it rises. Personally painful: all of my clothes, shoes, and jewelry part burned or soot encrusted and piled on the front lawn to be inventoried by the insurance company. And the books. The first task of the firefighters once the fire was out was to throw all combustible material out of the window so it did not reignite. Shovel loads of book parts arced to the ground, some with a few embers in their tails. For weeks afterward random pages from beautiful first editions flapped in the trees and bushes, floated in the breeze, and scurried along the ground when the wind picked up.

We camped out in the garage every day as we tried to salvage what we could while the clean-up crew in hazmat suits filled dumpster after dumpster and then cleaned and treated the smoke damaged wood and sealed it. We used an ozone machine to make the house smell as if there was never smoke, flames, or mold. Then we got real and decided to sell. Had we been in our 40s we would have fixed all the things we meant to fix, a door to the patio under the huge magnolia, a small balcony off the bedroom, electrical outlets in all the walls, walk in closets, expanded bathroom off the “master” bedroom. Our insurance would have paid for it and we would have enjoyed it for several decades before selling, perhaps in an upturned market. But we were, 5 or 6 years from retirement just lacking the heart to spend half of that time in a rented house while the renovations progressed only to retire and sell it at a huge loss.

So we sold the shell, and it is now a three family home. The contractor who bought it did a lovely job renovating and painting the outside up to the historical district requirements. I have not seen the inside. The garden and most of the trees and overgrown bushes are gone, but there were children’s bikes in the driveway when I walked by this fall and halloween decorations in the porch. And we have moved on, too.

When we were still struggling with the dilemma caused by “repair or replace” insurance and the fact that “replace” would not buy much in our part of New Jersey, we learned that our insurance company didn’t care where we replaced. And a house came for sale in the village where my husband’s mother lives. He was already there helping to take care of her, so sent me pictures. All of his family knew the house through multiple owners going back 50 years. The picture of the courtyard did it for me. I was ready to buy sight unseen and have never regretted it. You can buy a lot of house in southern France for the price of a small suburban house in the mythical central New Jersey.

So that’s how we got here. A freak electrical fire, a very good insurance policy, and an amazing house that became available when we needed it. We still miss a lot of what we lost, the little things mostly, and books—especially beautiful old first editions. But we were also able to save more than we expected and to clean the soot damage from many of the books in my library and other parts of the house. 

Please don’t say “you got lucky” to my husband, though. He lost the most, both his stuff (including stacks of notebooks of his writing and beloved books) and his childhood home, and he would not have made that trade; however, you can say “it turned out not so bad” or just “pas mal” and I will smile agreement as I head off to potter around the garden, my heart still aching for those for whom it did turn out bad.

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A bit about grief

I know of too many people, friends, colleagues, and neighbors, who lost so much more than a house in fires like ours, from pets to partners, siblings, children, and parents. I can’t begin to imagine such loss; for ten minutes I thought I had lost Walter, and that was enough. A decade and a half ago we lost Walter’s father who I also loved dearly and who, like my mother, died quickly and alone. Other tragedies are not my stories to tell, but the grief of human loss, both sudden and protracted, was very different from how we experienced the aftermath of the fire; human loss is devastating in places and ways I didn’t know one could feel. In that context, this might read like a classic FWP (“first world problem”) post. But I write it partly because I want to stop having to tell the story when people ask how we got here, and also because I want people to know so they might avoid such fires; but also because of something my friend Liz Kleinfeld wrote after the real tragedy of her partner’s stroke and then death and then repeated in her 2025 year end post. “I have to turn toward the things that are painful and difficult. If I don’t, I can’t possibly show up for myself or for others.” She quotes Buddhist practice and the belief that we must “acknowledge reality without sugarcoating it or looking away” and I find that wisdom compelling.

Everything Liz Kleinfeld has to say about grief is worth quoting and meditating on, and if you or anyone you know is dealing with grief of any kind but especially human illness or loss, I strongly recommend her Substack newsletter “Here for All of It” (https://elizabethkleinfeld.substack.com/) and her support and counseling available through her blog as well.

If you want to help others

Once you see the devastation of house fires, and on a huge scale, wildfires, you can’t unsee it. Drive past the tell-tale signs of house fire and you know that there are people struggling to process the loss. Many communities collect for those who have lost homes in their area. When I lived in upstate New York the stores would all have boxes and jars by the cash register for donations for the family in question; now people set up GoFundMe and other online accounts to help people get on their feet. If your town/village/community has a FaceBook page and it reports a fire, please ask if there is a GoFundMe or if someone is collecting donations and if so, support them. In addition to housing and medical care, people need hygiene products, the chance to take a shower and put on clean clothes, and a toothbrush! They may also need pet food and someone to take care of pets while they look for somewhere to live (my cats had to live in what was left of our house for 5 weeks while we stayed with friends and looked for a rental that would take cats, and we were lucky because there were intact spaces for). There are other organizations that step up, such as the American Red Cross, who you can also support. Here’s one list of 9 charities who will use your donations to help fire victims. Your local community also probably has a group or groups whose mission includes helping survivors of fire get back on their feet and I urge you to support them. Many churches help formally or informally, too.

And this list is groups that help and support first responders, who sadly also loose too much trying to save others

Finally, a PSA: how to avoid your own electrical fire

If you have any old surge protectors, please throw them away right now and buy new ones (scroll down on this page to “how old is too old” for an explanation). It took four minutes for the fire to engulf the study where it started, and four more to destroy the second floor of the house.

And if you are ever unlucky enough to have a serious fire, hire a public adjuster so you actually get what your insurance policy promises (we worked with United Public Adjusters & Appraisers). I can’t emphasize that enough. It is really because of our team that we have the house in France.