Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

I almost burned you down last year. It was an accident, but still, I’m sorry. I sat up straight in bed back in the city, my heart pounding, fully awake. The clock blinked green - 5:03 am. I had only been asleep for five hours but I could not go back. I could only think of one thing. 

Did I leave that candle burning at the cabin?

I lit it mid-morning as Conor napped and Norah and her friend were occupied at camp. The aroma of jasmine & pine pleasantly replaced the stale damp air trapped inside your 100-year-old walls. I unrolled my yoga mat in the living room as the smell wafted around me. After two years you finally started to feel like home. 

But the next morning, back in the city -- Are you burning in those woods on the only weekend no one is around? On the weekend I have finally come to miss you? To dream of what you could be?

I thought my heart might wake Brett up, so I climbed out of bed and walked to the living room in our apartment. No need to start the coffee maker for the caffeine. I started it instead so I’d have something to hold. Something to be with me as you burned on a silent hillside two hours away. 

I prayed. I googled. “Can an unattended candle burn a house down?” I read of shattered glass from too-hot flames. I read of warnings and NEVERS and think of how stupid a person must be to do something so careless. 

But I was being careful. I was taking care of three children and taking time in quiet for my own heart to heal. I packed up all the bags and did one more run through you. I turned off your lights and swept your floors. Surely, I would have seen a flickering flame on your stone mantle. The stone mantle with an antique wooden mirror resting on it. But the glass was dark and the afternoon was light. The flame would not have alerted me of my carelessness. 

That next day I pictured dark glass shattered on the mantle, flames engulfing the wooden mirror and licking your century old walls - proving you were worth the taste of joy - of coming alive. 

I could get there. I could leave right now and be back mid-morning. My turn around time would only be but a breath. One breath to save you.

I thought I didn’t care about you just a few weeks ago. But I do. I care. 

When Brett finally woke up that morning, I told him of my terrible deed. I offered to drive out now, to save you, or at least to be with you as you burned. Always the rational one, he offered instead to call the cleaner. He did. He was unavailable. No one was there. No one could hear the pop of fire or smell the lingering smoke until it was too late. 

I googled how long that candle could burn. 72 hours. We should be about a quarter of the way there. By the afternoon, I have thought of every scenario. By the next day, Brett assured me that we would have known by then if you were just ash. 

It must have been all in my head then. I must have just been paranoid. Maybe I blew it out on my last walk through after all. 

The next weekend we drove back out to the woods. Brett pulled the car up to our front door and I walked up to open it and let the light in. I walked straight over to the mantle and looked into the glass container. 

No wax. Just a nub of a wick at its end. Ashes to ashes. 

I tell you all this as a confession. You must have known I wasn’t crazy about you from the beginning. That part of me wanted to burn you to the ground. 

We bought you at a time when there was a fire slowly burning in me. It was unattended too. I wanted someone to come and blow it out. But no one did. I guess it needed to burn to the wicks end, all the way out. Dust to dust. 

We’re both still standing. Maybe those flames weren’t unattended after all. Maybe there was Someone making sure we were refined, but not consumed.

Thanks for being patient with me. Let’s start fresh this year, shall we?

**The photo in this post was taken by my dear friend Emily who is an extremely talented photographer. You can check out her work here: https://www.emilyfletkephotography.com/