Ninety-nine cents OR a Thousand dollars?

"Thank God we weren't home, we're safe, our pets were rescued and so were the pictures. Everything else can be replaced" that's what I said and that's what you all have been telling me, but actually, I'm beginning to realize, it's just not true. Yes, it's all just stuff but as I begin to list it, and assign "replacement values", I have come to understand that it is still a loss worth mourning.

Today I was at the house with with some very sweet, strong and quite frankly, a little pushy (but all in love) friends. We were there to take things out of the kitchen that are safe to remove. I was the "first one on scene" so to speak and as I looked around the kitchen and dining room at all my stuff I realized there were only a few things that really mattered to me; a few things handed down by each of my grandmothers, some pieces painted by my mom, and some items from our wedding, as far as I was concerned, the rest could go right into the dumpster with the rest of the house. And I meant it, and I still mean it. Perhaps I am not thinking clearly, or maybe I am being stubborn.

Those pushy friends of mine covered the bases by packing things up, whether I wanted them or not, offering to wash them, store them, and even use them :) until I am ready to move back in and decide once and for all, whether or not I really need, or want all that other stuff. And then they had the nerve to force me to eat lunch - can you imagine? Ganging up on me like that!

The thing is, I didn't want to spend time washing and packing my stuff, what I wanted to do was what I have seen many people do on TV and wondered what the heck they were thinking. I wanted to go dig through the ashes and find a buried treasure. What I REALLY wanted were the vacation journals written by Alyssa and Aidan. The tradition was inspired, in part, by a movie I had seen when Aidan was four. Right after, I bought each of them a composition notebook for 99 cents and each time we went on vacation they had to "write" something about the trip. Aidan was four and couldn't quite write when we started so he drew pictures of his first trip to the Wild Animal Park. Alyssa's writings were much more detailed, included lists and sometimes family trees, of each person with us ( you know we like to travel in a pack) or the Barbies she brought (she was a fanatic) sometimes she would also illustrate the pool or a map of the resort, and as she got older, she would take Aidan's book and correct his spelling and grammar with a red pen. How do I assign a replacement value of these books? Ninety-nine cents? I would pay a thousand dollars to buy them back. But even if the insurance company gave us a thousand dollars for each of them, I would still long to see those pages.

I am trying hard to count my blessings, not my losses. I am so grateful I have my kids, I have the memories and I have the pictures!!! I would not trade that for those books but the fact of the matter is, not everything can be replaced and the only other things I want out of that house are things I just can't have. It seems cruel to me that I can't just count it all as lost but I have to decide what those things are worth. And I'm sure it will seem even more cruel when I hear them tell me they aren't worth what I think they are.