Lou Mulford

The early morning of Tuesday January 7^th my daughter called with a worried tone. “Mom, how windy is it up at your house?” I answered, “Not bad” looking out the window at the relatively calm trees in my back yard. Things appeared normal even though high winds had been predicted.  She was anxious about bringing my granddaughter up for my weekly babysitting date.  I told her not to worry and by 9:00AM our little girl was in my arms.  

She was oddly lethargic and wanted to nap right after breakfast.  I put her down and she slept soundly.  By 11:00 AM or so I was making a big soup on the stove when the phone rang again. In a panic my daughter exclaimed, “We are evacuating! There’s a fire! It’s bad!  You need to bring the baby to me now.”  She gave me the address of her friend where they would be camped out.  She hung up and my world stopped.  That mental constricting and adrenaline rise one must tamper down for the sake of sanity and calm procedure gripped like a vice.  I know that feeling all too well after 40 years in our fire hazard canyon.  This scenario however, seemed impossible. 

Six months earlier my daughter and son in law found their dream home in the Palisades.  They moved from our canyon neighborhood just down the street to begin their next phase of life. Thanksgiving and Christmas had been joyful as they hosted us in their lovely new property away from the high mountain where we still live, and she had been raised.  It was a tranquil place near Sunset Blvd where one could never dream a wildfire would ever touch.

My husband was out running an errand, and I told him to get home asap.  My grandbaby miraculously slept while I focused on packing things for Bob, our 15-year-old dog, and me.  I assumed we would be out for no more than two nights and packed accordingly.  There had been no evacuation orders at that time. We found a friend who would take us in, and I watched the news while scrambling to prepare and make sense of it all.  I firmly believed our house was in no danger, but I also knew the winds were high now and anything was possible.  

The news reporters were camped out by our church in the Palisades.  Calvary School and Church are located at the base of Palisades Drive where the fire had started at the top of the mountain range in the neighborhood I had known for decades. Our daughters graduated from Calvary Pre-School to ninth grade.  We have been church members since 1993.  Our community and closest friends live in Pacific Palisades.  It was incredibly surreal to watch a lifetime literally go up in smoke.

I woke my granddaughter with bags minimally packed, soup pot still on the cooled stove, and a refrigerator full of leftover party food from our first night of entertaining in 5 years since Covid and my husband’s Cancer.  Bob came home in shock at the gravity of the situation as I rushed out the door to deliver my precious cargo.  I called to him to hurry and meet me at our friend’s home in Hancock Park.

The smoke plumed in the west and the streets were gridlocked but I managed to get to my daughter and then to our magnificent safe house where our friend warmly welcomed us.  We settled in with a glass of wine mixed with a restless sense of humor and apprehension.  Nothing seemed real at that moment.  I have become well acquainted with that numbing cocktail of self-preservation in the face of trauma that is all too genuine.  My last several blogs have documented much of our Cancer odyssey in painful details.

I noticed Bob was increasingly fatigued and unsteady on his cane as he walked.  I had to help guide him in a manner that he had long since passed with the many months of physical therapy.  Wednesday night we were both coughing and realized we were ill with something nasty.  We slept in most of Thursday and by that evening in the night my husband was barely able to move.  At 3:00AM I was on the phone with 911.  By 4:00 I watched the paramedics carry him out on a stretcher to Cedars Sinai.  I was sick and couldn’t go with him.  My friend has a caretaker on his property who thankfully helped me and escorted Bob to the ambulance with the men.  The reflections of flashing red light created an eerie silhouette on the scene as I stood alone under a vintage chandelier like a 1940’s tragic movie queen.   I couldn’t move or speak.  I didn’t cry until our caretaker friend walked back in the door as the siren wailed in the distance.  I honestly can’t remember if I’ve been able to truly cry since that night. 

The hospital called on Friday with news that Bob had Covid and Pneumonia.  I learned I also had Covid and that we had most ungenerously shared the virus with our host.  None of us had ever contracted Covid before in all the years of Viral hysteria.  What a lovely time to decide to infect us! 

I spent the two evacuation weeks coughing and healing with our friend on either end of his spacious home.  I kept up with Bob suffering in the hospital again, tried not to worry, walked our dog Frankie, watched the news, texted, ordered clothes to give me more than two sets of clothing and one pair of pajamas and managed to fill needed prescriptions not brought.  I followed the fires and their progress and began filling out forms for FEMA and CA Fair Plan.  

I learned much to my horror that my daughter’s new home burned to the ground.  They lost everything. All the new flooring they had replaced, bannisters and other upgrades they had invested in.  They lost their Christmas that still decorated the outside perimeter and gate.  A lone slightly melted wreath still hangs on the standing wrought iron like a sad symbol of what once was and what had been hoped it would be.  Ashes and debris surround the metal in a twisted grey mass.  The scene is repeated in a multitude of flattened homes on her street.  For full comprehension just use Google Earth and type in the disaster areas to see the magnitude of damage.  It was only October when Bob and I stood at their door and handed candy out to bouncing children in the neighborhood dressed in all the array of Halloween costumery.  Most were accompanied by their parents who were equally decked out.  It was a fun place filled with joy and camaraderie.  The street is a desolate war zone now with families dispersed and dislocated.  All working to piece-together their lives and their broken dreams.

I prayed for our own home as it was now in peril.  The winds were whipping again and the fire trucks descended on our canyon from San Diego and other cities.  God thankfully spared our neighborhood with a change of wind direction and the manpower to preserve.  Fire retardant rained down in swaths of hot pink cream.  I studied the watch Duty App all night as the little purple Pac Man plane images danced around our mountain.  The fire line remained steady and secure.  By morning I could see our house and community had survived.

I returned home for good on Tuesday January 21^st.  I had entered Monday just to clean out the dead horse smell from rotted foods in the refrigerator after two weeks of off and on electricity.  Everything had to go including the moldy soup pot on the stove.  The floors were gritty for days but with time I got them clean.  My neighbor Ann appeared at my door and exclaimed “We’re going to clean your roof for you!.”  She lassoed my other neighbor and his power washer and spent a good day cleaning Pepto Bismol goo off my house.  God bless my good neighbors and friends.  They are a big reason why I have the strength to persevere.

Bob was released from the hospital on Wednesday the 22nd, 17 pounds lighter and un-stable, but I set to nursing him back to health once again.   I’ve learned that this is what I do.  I do it because I have no choice. My husband contracted Leukemia in 2022.  He had a debilitating life altering stem cell transplant in 2023 with complications that have lasted to the present day.  My daughter’s house burned down in 2025.  Life goes on regardless and I must choose to move with the pace and keep living or stop in my drama and die.  I choose life.

My grandson used to work to fit his puzzle pieces together in frustration at age three.  The colors didn’t match but he was intent on pushing those bits that looked like the shapes should align.  He would press and pound and want to give up when it was a wash.  I would tell him to be patient and keep turning them or look for a new one.  Not an easy lesson at three or sixty-three and then some.  Perseverance, patience and an open mind are the key to success in just about everything.  

It turns out fulfilling dreams is a fluid situation.  It moves like the waves and the coming of the dawn or the setting of the sun over the ocean.  The light will appear as a sliver in the darkness coming and going, illuminating or disappearing with each passing day. There can be joy in how you perceive each transition. 

Sometimes you have a porcelain vase that breaks in sturdy fine lined chunks.  They are easy to repair and glue together.  Other times the vase lands in such a manner that the vessel smashes into fine unsalvageable remnants.  There is no choice but to toss it and come up with a replacement.  A dream or desire is a beautiful thing.  We can nurture it and fulfill it to the extent we are able until it is complete, or if it is thwarted off course by life and circumstance we reinvent and move forward to something possibly greater than we could ever have imagined.  I’ve adored my dreams for my children. I loved having my grandkids live down the street before their Palisades move.  I’ve happily visualized life with them in their new home before the fires.  I cherished the many healthy years with my outgoing athletic husband that I could never picture changing.  I don’t know what tomorrow will bring as it will be years before the city is fully resurrected.  My husband is still traveling his positive healing path with an unknown outcome.  It might be much the same, it might be very different.  I just know It will be something new. 

Change is painstaking and often ugly.  It can be bitter business, or it can be a hopeful challenge.  $x*%# happens.  There is serious grieving to embrace at the start.  I viewed the Palisades in person with my son in law for the first time last weekend.  My heart was broken.  I needed to see the mass devastation like viewing a body at a funeral service.   I needed closure for this life chapter to prepare me for the future of the next.  The Palisades will rebuild. Alta Dena will return.  My children and grandchildren are alive.  They are all doing well and meeting obstacles head on with no fear.  They have been buoyed by friends and loved ones as have so many in our city as people give and share what they can. 

I thankfully lost no friends.  Most of them lost their homes but praise God they are breathing.  The grass is peeking out green on our burn scarred mountain behind my house.  The birds are nesting as spring brings new growth and life song.  Easter is around the corner and my church community is still meeting off site.  We have a blessed new pastor who preached his first official sermon one week before the fires.  Who knew this was his story as our minister and spiritual leader?  He is perfect for the task, and we have embraced him with gratitude.  God knew we needed him.

In the prayer chapel of our church some of our brave firefighters wrote in a journal that was available in the room.  I’ll attach a photo. I was so touched that they were meeting and praying there when they were able to during the fight for our church and school home.  All the structures are sound save a hole in the church roof and some water and smoke damage. There is work to be done and a community to support.  The winds favored that section of Palisades Drive and for this I am grateful.  God is good. God knows what we need, and He is here to protect us on this side of heaven until we enter His arms on our appointed day for eternal protection and love.  I grieve for those families who lost loved ones and pray they find comfort and peace in the knowledge that life is known to be fragile.  I pray God will embrace them and that they believe there is more to the journey than what they can currently see.

I will cry again.  I need the release …. Maybe it will be after I publish this blog.  All I know is that I and my family are survivors.  We will be okay.  I will be okay.  Maybe not every day, but in the ever-moving current of my life.  

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make a profit.” / You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. / Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.”

James 4:13-15

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Psalm 34:18

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

Thank you for taking the time to read what I have to say. I truly appreciate you more than you may know. People rarely read a sentence these days much less an entire blog. I invite you to subscribe on my website if you’re interested. You’ll receive my blogs in your email every other month or less and be more certain to see them as they come.  Please check your junk box for your confirmation e-mail.