Destroy to Rebuild

I'm a big fan of Barenaked Ladies, the band not the other one (well actually… nevermind). What I like about the band is that you may have one goofy song about chimpanzees next to a song about spousal abuse. It keeps you guessing and not quite sure if you should laugh or cry.  Just like life. I figure it's not a bad strategy to emulate in my blog. So long as you're not laughing when you should be crying and crying when you should be laughing, I really don't care.  So I'm going to bring it down a little now. Maybe something funny next time – of course unless you think human misery is funny, then laugh away.

Having recently moved from New Hampshire we still own our house out there and have been trying to sell it, with very, very little luck. Unfortunately, I had a rather an attentive realtor and a rather empty tank of heating fuel. I had set the heat low, but well above freezing. Unfortunately with a few power outages my thermostats reset to 70° and burned off the heat in the house much faster than I expected. When my realtor came to check on the house for the first time in three months, she found a scene out of Dr. Zhivago. Here is my once beautiful house below:

What we determine happened was the toilet froze, cracking a small fitting. It was a small plastic piece in one bathroom. But the problem was unattended to for a long time.  At first glance the entryway was pretty destroyed.  We got a hold of Servpro who came in to assess the damage.  I figured I would lose a portion of the front entryway floor and walls and ceiling, but that would be it. Once Servpro got finished removing everything damaged by water, my house look like this:

This included removing all wood flooring and carpeting throughout the entire house (except the kitchen) and at least one wall in all but two of the bedrooms. The amount of demolition needed to repair the house completely shocked me. I thought it was just an isolated problem that could be fixed quickly in a very focused manner. Unfortunately, the water had traveled underneath the flooring and spread to virtually every room in the entire house from the small cracked fitting in the bathroom.  So to ensure that the problems was fully resolved, Servpro had to pretty much got our house.

I think Adrienne summed it up best when she saw the pictures:

"I don't even know what to say.  We greeted family and friends there, we had Christmases, our children grew from toddler-hood, baby Ronin, scary movies all Halloween, Patrick's video games with Andrew and Forrest, family home evenings, lobster dinners, Thanksgiving, making jam in the summer, pizza night.  Completely wiped away.  A special part of me has died, looking at these pics."

This is where I go all allegorical and a bit churchy (But hey, it's my blog. You came to me. You don't like, go to get your own blog).  Sometimes there are things in our lives that require more attention than we give them; could be your children, your marriage, your job, your physical health. Like my house, I thought it was doing well enough and figured someone else would be taking care of it. Then something unexpected happens, like a power outage and the deep freeze. Still only something small cracks, like a fitting around the toilet.  But before you know it, extensive damages has been done and you can't ignore it.

As much as it hurts seeing how much of the house we loved and tied to so many wonderful memories stripped bare, it had to be done. There were no shortcuts here. It had to be destroyed to be rebuilt. Everything that was rotting or wet or icy had to be taken out. This left our house and our memories very scarred and very ugly. Yet, the foundation is dry, the walls are dry, the stairs are dry. Now rebuilding can happen.

I guess I've seen this in my life enough where perceptions, values, habits, and relationships need to have their damaged components torn out to rebuild it into something beautiful. It hurts to see and it is difficult to go through, but hopefully by going down to the bare frame what is rebuilt will be beautiful and strong and uncompromised by past damages.

So here's a toast to rebuilding (raising my rootbeer) and to all of us going through it (Louise, Gerald, Susan, Kendra, Anna, Ryan, Brooke, Aaron, Kimberly, Natalie and many other unnamed); may it hurt only for a short time until the new walls start rising up again.