Mark Brown is an ER doctor at the busiest emergency room in Los Angeles County. Kay Lenz is a Golden Globe-nominated actress who has appeared in more than 100 movies and TV shows.
Mark and Kay articulated a profound sense of loss after the fire that most others seemed unable to express: belongings we’re emotionally attached to, things we keep to hand down to the next generation – coupled with the guilt of feeling devastated even when so many people in the world are so much worse off.
Mark: “Our sense of heartbreak and sadness is bigger than the sum of the parts. It’s a house, it’s stuff. Everybody got out safely, there’s nobody dead or injured. And yet, I have much more grief and sadness than I did when my parents died – and I loved my parents.
“It keeps striking me that, if the grief is greater than the sum of the parts then there’s something I’m not identifying – things I can’t put my finger on that I can’t quite articulate. And I’ve tried to think about what some of those things are. One of them, obviously, is the stuff you lose that you were personally connected to that meant something to you. You didn’t necessarily have to dig them out and look at them every day for them to be important.
“For example, when I was in college and grad school, my father would write me letters a few times a week. They were handwritten, one-page letters, and they were often very funny and very insightful. I really looked forward to getting them, and I saved all of them. Now that my father’s gone, I really cherished them. It’s possible that I never would have gone back and read them again, but I really grieve their absence.
“I feel like there’s a fabric of our lives made from the threads of the things we have. In 1880, my great-grandmother in Montana had a rocking chair sent all the way from New Hampshire when she was having her first baby. Obviously, it was sentimental to me – but I was just the keeper of the thread. It wasn’t mine; it was mine to protect and then pass on. And now, I regret that thread comes to an end.
“Our Malibu neighborhood had never burned down, ever. The morning of the fire, I felt a little cocky that it wouldn’t come here. We’re not near any brush; we’re surrounded by other houses – but Kay was very, very worried about it and wanted to get out. I heard that most houses burn down because of spot fires and I thought maybe I should stay back to put them out, and just let Kay take off with the dog.
Then reality hit: “It was 11:30 and we saw the fire cresting above our street – so we decided to drive down to the beach just below our neighborhood. In hindsight, I think there was an incredibly hot fire tornado that just swept down throughout the entire area. On our street, almost all the houses burned up – including ours. When I came back three hours later, the house was 80 percent gone. I might easily have been fried if I had stayed.
“In the weeks afterward, I had this recurrent feeling that the house had been hurt – you know how you sort of anthropomorphize things. I wanted to soothe or hug the house and make it not hurt. Obviously, the house didn’t care; it was my feelings that were woven into that house. You’re part of the house, and the house is part of you. It’s history, a part of your life. The feeling of wanting to go home tells us that home means something to us in terms of well-being, and it’s our ultimate safe space.”
Kay: “Unless they’ve been through this, no one can really empathize. They can only sympathize. People say, and I know they mean well (I’ve probably said this myself): ‘Well, at least you got out okay’ or ‘the things that burned are just stuff – you can replace it.’
“But you can’t replace something that your grandmother hand-needlepointed, something your great aunt brought from England, or your mother’s jewelry. Things are not just things; they’re things that belonged to those we loved, who are no longer with us. They’re the things that made me ‘me’ and made Mark ‘Mark.’
“We’ve been together for 18½ years, and the love letters we wrote to each other on every anniversary are gone. The total collection and experience of my 65 years of living are gone. When you get older and don’t have as good a memory, it’s looking at those things that bring those memories back.
“Someone told me I would have a ‘new normal,’ but I don’t want a new normal. I want the normal that I had. Someone else said, ‘You can rebuild, and then your house will be exactly the way you want it.’ Well, our house was the way we wanted it. Yes, we’ll be filling the house with all of these nice, new things – but they’ll be things that have no history or emotional attachment.
“We throw away stuff all the time, but certain things we choose to keep – and that means they’re important to you, they were ‘selected.’ Making that choice is saying something about how important that item was to you.”
Mark: “Certainly, we second guess about what we took and what we didn’t take. One person got out of their car at the beach with only a bottle of Jergen’s lotion. You think about all the things you wish you had grabbed.
“But it’s also the case, and I think about this a lot: there are people in the world who are in terrible shape, whose lives are shattered in much greater depths than mine. Even after the fire, my life is still so much better than theirs that my loss is almost laughable. And yet the reality of our good fortune doesn’t take away our grief, because the grief doesn’t have to do with relative good fortune.”
After Kay noted how much they appreciate finding “a fantastic rental place” to stay in while they plan for the future, Mark continued to reflect on their mixed feelings about the entire experience. “We could easily imagine someone moving in here and being thrilled that this is their new home. It’s an odd juxtaposition to be here in this beautiful place and still be so sad.”
