How Can I Ever Repay You?
Two nights ago, my fiancée accidentally set fire to our kitchen and the fire extinguisher in our apartment was defective. The fire spread quickly and burned through most of the building before they were able to contain it.
I wasn’t home, so I wasn’t there to help my girlfriend gather anything up. If I was, I would have forced her outside and told her to leave it all.
It’s just stuff. She chose differently. First, she took our two dogs outside and handed them off to a neighbor on leashes. Then she went back in.
At this point, the kitchen was engulfed in flames and she couldn’t make it into the living room, but she could get into the bedroom.
She knew she wouldn’t be able to make two trips and she had to act fast. Both of us have lost parents. I lost my dad three years ago.
He was a friend of her father’s so she knew him (though not very well), but he passed before I actually met her. I have most of my dad’s stuff in a storage unit, but in our bedroom I have his ashes and a couple of other very personal things from my time with him.
She lost her mom as a teenager, and because her father is a jerk, she only has a few small things of hers, including her wedding dress.
Instead of choosing to save the few things that she has of her mom’s, she gathered up my father’s things, wrapped them in a sheet, and ran out of the room.
I don’t even know how to begin to say thank you. I’m so completely devastated by her losing her mom’s things like that, and I can’t imagine what she was thinking or how much she must really love me to make that decision.
I don’t know how to repay her. Or where to begin. She must be devastated. I can’t imagine losing the last bit of my dad.