A Love Letter to Lost Things

Can the minus of life make you more?

Photo by David Black

Every time I’ve gone to write this piece, I’ve thought of a book which I believed was titled Everything We Lost in The Fire. It seemed to my eyes and ears a lovely summary and a great way to describe what happens when flames engulf most of your belongings. However, today I discovered that the book I recall is actually called Things We Lost in the Fire, and somehow this seems really fitting because, five years later, what once seemed like “everything” is now diminished in my memory.

In 2016, I was offered a job in Los Angeles. I’d long wanted to move there, but this gave me the catalyst to do so. The catch was I had eight weeks to make the move. I set about packing up my London flat, willfully naive about just how many things I had. The weather gods saw fit to dump several tons of rain on London, so at least I had no desire to go out. I spent a good week packing multiple boxes. When you pack like this, you make a fair number of decisions about what is most precious, what you need access to, and what must go to a “safe place” — aka my parents' house.

Eventually, I sent two containers to a place called Storing.com who get a special mention here, but spoiler: not for the right reasons, as you will discover later.

For about four years, these things sat somewhere in the suburbs outside London (FYI, storage in London is £££) in what I’d been assured was a military storage building, which, while it sounded somewhat aggressive, at least promised some security. The lady who sold me the unit had reassured me kindly and even sent me a sweet gift to wish me on my way.

Four years later, I was in Dallas for work. I had afternoon meetings, but there was a Dior exhibition I’d planned to see that morning.

Before I left, I opened my emails to find one titled “Twinwoods Warehouse Fire” and the contents were as follows:

Dear Customer,

Regrettably, we have to inform you that last Friday, a fire started in a packaging company next door to our main storage warehouse, which then spread to ours, totally destroying our facility where your unit/s were kept. We apologise for not informing you sooner; however, our IT has been affected, hence the delay. The link below provides some additional information.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-50273637

We understand this will be a shock to you. We are totally devastated here at Storing.com and very sorry this has happened to your storage, but this is beyond our control. We have many customers, so please bear with us, and we will be in touch with you within seven days with more details of the insurance position.

The Directors

Storing.com

Five days prior, everything I owned had been destroyed in a fire at the storage building. Rather than call us, they’d sent this generic email and the BBC news report.

Thousands of miles from home, in a strange place, I first thought it was a generic email; my stuff was at another location, surely. But then it sank in that it was all gone.

What no one tells you with a loss like that is that there are moments for months afterward when you will be haunted by the ghosts of your past belongings. You’ll go to cook an egg and remember the frying pan your mother bought you that was so nice to cook with. You’ll think about how you only used it a few times and rebuke yourself for forgetting to ship it.

You’ll think about the records you owned, how you remember each and every trip to buy them back when records were scarce, and how you’d considered them an investment, only to see that investment turn to ash.

You’ll wonder if the Marc Jacobs dress you scrimped to buy when you earned nothing was in there or if it’s in a suitcase at your parents’ — answer TBD.

You’ll remember the drawing your dear friend Esme made, a Stegosaurus decorated in willow pattern, which is irreplaceable.

Then you’ll lament the Hole hairclip you bought and how it’s melted beyond recognition. The thrill of finding it on eBay after coveting it for years is now gone.

Just after this happened, a magazine asked me to write a piece about it. I duly wrote and submitted my draft and had it returned. “It’s not the story we want; can you do x and y?” I sent it to a writer I respect very much (Ruby Warrington), who was kind enough to tell me there was nothing wrong with it. In hindsight, the site I’d chosen favours a kind of warm clickbait format, which just was not a fit for me or my words.

I guess this is it. It’s nice to write years later when the grief is less raw. Some things that came from the fire are that I know I will not return to England and assemble my old life — probably just as well, as I have outgrown it now. I will always miss the mixtapes my lovely ex-boyfriend from school made me; I’ll mourn the loss of my styling portfolio, not least because the photographic prints in it cost me three months' rent at the time. I will still wish I had that frying pan too.

If you ask me what you can gain from all this, it’s the knowledge that you don’t need much. You also gain a brilliant understanding of how this kind of situation makes people behave. You would think that hundreds of people would unite over a shared loss, but there’s nothing like grief to pit people against each other. I spent the pandemic on hours of calls where people screamed at each other until I bowed out for my own sanity.

Another loss in this was the insurance. I spent a good six months being reassured I was insured for a substantial sum, which turned out not to be true at all. I’m still involved in a small group in a dwindling court case and have some small vestige of optimism; it can come good. Drinks on me if it does!

I’d love to have reached some grand conclusion on loss in all this, but the truth is that the only tangible change is that most things I buy now are to be enjoyed in the moment. Beautiful clothes, books, and delicious food. For some reason, the idea of another record collection is not one I’m keen to pursue; it turns out the thrill of the chase the first time around can’t easily be recreated.

I don’t want to sum this up with a lovely profound conclusion of how I realised it’s mostly just stuff and replaceable, it’s true but also trite. I still find that years later I’ll get pangs for certain things but they’re gnat bites now as opposed to wasp stings.

Today I know instantly what I’d run to save or miss the most if it was gone and if you ask nicely in the comments I just might share it with you too.