In Memory Of Jojo: 5 Years

It was exactly five years ago today that I drove from work home at Cara's urging to find my home - and three of those of my neighbors - smoldering in ashes. Jojo, our loverbird, perished from smoke inhalation or heat or both. Fifi made it to the basement and was rescued by the firemen. No one was home, no one was hurt, but three apartments were destroyed utterly and a fourth had major smoke and water damage, and the rest had smoke damage.

Google now has images of what the apartment looked like after the fire. The red arrow points to where I lived, the blue one to where the fire broke out.

Though we lost a lot, including the bird, we were immediately helped by coworkers and friends from all around. The Red Cross, the community, the High School, friends at IBM and abroad, and our families all chipped in to help us get back on our feet. We are still hurting a little, financially, from the damage, but we are grateful for all that we have in our friends and relations.

We miss you, Jojo. I hope I treated you well in your short time on this planet.

POST-SCRIPT:

I took the sat photo from Google, as I mentioned. Earlier today I sent the same image to one of my former neighbors in that complex but I did not trim the image as I did above. She pointed out the irony of the ads next to the picture (click on the image to see a larger version):