Thursday was my (now) husband's birthday. Saturday was our wedding. Friday our house caught on fire. Nobody was home. 3 dogs, 4 cats, and 8 rats died. Tai is our only surviving pet, because he was in the backyard.
Firefighters believe our dog turned the stove on, and a cardboard box caught fire.
Many people asked if we canceled the wedding because of our loss. Fuck no. If anything, we needed it more. We celebrated love, surrounded by friends and family, and started a new beginning.
Today I'm going to talk about the fire. Today I am going to allow myself grief.
Later, I am going to post about the wedding. I'll post pictures and videos and happy things.
But not today.
Today I want to express my gratitude and awe for all the support we have received. You all have no idea how much you have helped. We don't have much energy for responding to individual messages, but we read everything and are constantly amazed and humbled by the support network that we have.
Because of you, and because of the love we have for each other, and because of Tai being the best emotional support dog in the universe, we are going to be okay. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But we know we have a future of happiness ahead of us. We are lucky to have a safe place to stay, and a home we can move into soon.
We don't plan on salvaging much from the house. Things not touched by the fire have pretty bad smoke damage, and honestly...a fresh start is better overall, psychologically. We don't know when we'll be let back in to take a look around.
We did have renter's insurance, and that process has been started. We have also been in touch with animal control and our vet in order to start the cremation process. Tai is healthy and doing well.
Thanks again to everyone that has offered us support, offered donations (seriously - turns out it's expensive to lose all your stuff), offered help by service and items, and to everyone who has shared in our grief. Thank you for being in our lives. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
If anyone would like to help us rebuild our lives, our GoFundMe can be found HERE.
