Memory of Fire

The instant I stepped inside the burning building, the old fear gripped me. Logically, I knew that there was no real danger—that the fire had been set on purpose as a training exercise, and that firefighters were positioned all around outside, ready to extinguish the blaze at a moment’s notice. But that knowledge melted away to nothing as I watched the ink-black streams of smoke creep up the walls and felt the first terrible waves of heat against my skin. I dropped the fire hose I’d been carrying and ran out of the building.

My long, painful relationship with fire began on a Sunday visit to my grandmother’s house in the suburbs of Detroit in 1969, when I was nine years old. There had been an odor of gas in the house for some days, but the men from Gas and Electric hadn’t been able to find a leak. “You girls better go play down in the basement,” Grandma told my five-year-old cousin Kimmie and me. “There’s less of a smell down there.” Little did my grandparents and the repairmen know, the gas leak was actually coming directly from underground.

Kimmie and I decided on hide-and-seek. I was it. I turned my face to a wall near the furnace, closed my eyes, and started counting while Kimmie ran and hid. “24 . . . 23 . . . 22 . . . 21 . . .” Just as I got to three, the furnace exploded.

Smoke, falling debris, and flames were everywhere. Then, out of the chaos, a light appeared—a light that was different from the hot, red flames all around me. It was cool, blue, otherworldly. I staggered toward it. I found myself looking at a hole that the explosion had blown in the side of the house. My clothes and my hair were on fire. Screaming, I scrambled through the hole and out onto the lawn.

The trip to the hospital was a blur. The next thing I knew, I was floating above my hospital bed, totally at peace. Looking down, I saw my own body, wrapped in white bandages. I felt a huge swell of relief that I wasn’t in that body anymore.

I glided up a long, wide flight of stairs. At the top, three angels were standing, bathed in the same blue light that had guided me out of the basement. I don’t know exactly how we communicated, but the message they sent was clear. It wasn’t my time yet. I would have to go back. But whenever things got bad, all I needed to do was close my eyes and think of them. They would

be nearby.

I awakened from my coma three weeks after the fire to discover that I had burns on 50 percent of my body. My face was terribly scarred. I underwent 17 plastic surgeries. At school the other kids taunted me, called me a monster. In fifth grade, a teacher stood me up in front of the class as an example of why kids should never play with matches. My grandparents were consumed with guilt over what had happened. Kimmie escaped the accident with only minor injuries, but she moved away shortly after the fire. We never got to talk about it.

The physical scars weren’t the only ones the fire left behind. As an adult I lived each and every day in fear. I had to force myself to fill my tank at the gas station. At the movies, I’d look away if a fire scene came on screen. The fear attacked me with the same merciless hunger that the flames themselves had.

Through all those years, the only thing that kept me going was the memory of my angels and the promise they’d made. Whenever things got really bad, I would stop what I was doing, close my eyes, and think of them.

, I would tell myself,

. I held on to that promise with all my might.

When I was in my thirties, I got involved helping local kids who were burn victims. I knew these children suffered, like I did, from both inner and outer scars, and that it was often difficult for them to talk about how they felt. Because of what I’d been through, they opened up to me. I also started a summer camp exclusively for kids who’d suffered burns.

Continued on page 2: 'My fears threatened again to overtake me. I almost turned back...' »