Second Hand Trauma

My trauma is second hand. The plane crash into my parent’s home happened before I was born. The fire that took their home as a result of the crash was not in my lifetime. But as I see the devastation in California right now, it’s the people who have no homes to go back to who haunt me. Their loss of everything. I cannot help but think of my parents when they lost everything to fire. My mother often spoke of the heirlooms lost in the fire and the photographs that she could not recover. She didn’t speak of her daughter, found later in the rubble. My heart is with the survivors of this far reaching tragedy.