"The phone rang at 11:10 pm. I tried to ignore it. I was tired and hoped the call wasn't from a distraught therapy client. But the voice rising from my answering machine was Kathy, one of the therapists I worked with on the second floor of a building called Century Hall. "Pick up! There's a fire!" Kathy shouted. I picked up. "What do you mean? A fire?" "There's been an explosion. Century Hall is burning!" said Kathy. This news was so bizarre that, at first, I couldn't understand it. I'd been in our therapy clinic in the building called Century Hall until seven that evening. The restaurant and bar on the first floor of Century Hall had been busy, filled with the sounds we were accustomed to hearing in the background of our therapy work, not a distraction, just loud enough to remind us that we weren't alone in the building. Our clinic had occupied the second floor for three years. I couldn't picture Century Hall, a beautiful old Victorian building, on fire. I had to see it for myself."
"Century Hall was three miles away. We smelled the smoke when we were two miles away. Hard to believe that a fire could cause that much smoke in just fifteen minutes. But it had. Chris parked the car. I jumped out and ran toward a fireman. The flames, spreading across multiple buildings, were shooting up at least fifty feet. Until this fire, there had been two floors of rented apartments above the row of stores to the south of Century Hall. Now all I could see to the south was smoke and flames. And to the north, flames were traveling across the front of a nearby duplex and rolling across the roof of Century Hall. I began to cry. At the time, I couldn't have said why. But remembering it now, I realize I was grieving this event from decades past. Century Hall had died."
A late-night phone call warned that Century Hall was on fire after an explosion. The therapy clinic occupied the second floor and the downstairs restaurant and bar had been busy earlier that evening. My husband and I drove to the scene and smelled smoke two miles away. Flames spread across multiple buildings, consumed apartments above stores, and traveled across Century Hall's roof, rising at least fifty feet. Witnessing the destruction produced immediate crying and an intense, unexpected grief connected to the loss of the familiar Victorian building and the clinic within it.
Read at Psychology Today
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