01/12/2025
Altadena & Palisades. Both incredible deeply historic family communities. My heart lies between and with you. 😔
Written by a Pacific Palisades high school teacher 💔
It's too much, it's too sad...We watch online, we see pictures and videos, but our brains can't process it all because it's too big. We say we don't have the language for it, and we don't, but the word we keep returning to is "Gone." Childhood homes...gone. Family houses...gone. Huge and intricate mansions, sweet mid-century moderns, Spanish and Craftsman and bungalows... gonegonegone.
And it isn't just the homes, although those hurt the most. It's everything else...the schools and the shops...the churches and offices and markets. The library...the LIBRARY. And the park and the ballfields and the benches and trees...so many trees in our beautiful home town. Everything burned and blackened, smoldering and broken...Even the sidewalks are buckling. We are trying to understand the absolute Gone-ness of the Palisades, but we can't. Our minds can't stretch that wide...
And also, our hearts are breaking over and over. Even if, like me, you didn't lose a home today, we love SO many people who did and we don't know what to do about all this pain and loss and confusion and fear. Some of the people we love most in the world are homeless tonight and we want to pull them away from this loss and comfort them and change what happened but we also know that we can't so we clutch ourselves and cry with our friends or we are quiet next to them because it's hard to know how to best love people who have lost so much.
Everyone is very clear that if they got their families and pets out safely, the most important thing got handled. But still...Inside each of these vanished houses were objects of significance and enchantment. There were letters and paintings, books and necklaces, things of beauty and emotion that had to be left behind, and these things are little ghosts now that will follow their people for the rest of their lives and will glimmer in their memories every now and then. Things sometimes have much more than mass...they can also have magic and a little of that may endure but much of it is...gone.
The truth, for me anyway, is that this Palisades life of ours is...finished. The destruction is too great and there isn't enough left to bring it back. Truly, the town will be rebuilt, there will be shops again and a library, but it won't be the same...There's too much loss and so much sadness...Some things, you can't come back from. This is a different place now, and it may one day be wonderful, but today, it's a griefscape.
I'm so, so sorry, and so, so sad. For everyone who lost their homes and the stories that happened among those walls and for the rest of us who grew up in this place of perfect breezes and eucalyptus and safety and love...This day breaks our hearts and we are in mourning for our lovely town, now utterly Lost.
