I lit the grill, put the burners on high, and lowered the top. I liked to get the grates good and hot so they’d create grill marks on the chicken. Didn’t add to the taste. Just looked good. I went into the kitchen through the carport door and started chopping potatoes for potato salad. I’d just gotten started when I heard a noise. A big noise. I mean, a really, really loud noise. Like a jet airplane. “What the hell is that?” I thought. I went to the door peered through the blinds.

Yikes!

A four-foot flame was shooting from the propane tank’s nozzle. I didn’t have to sit and wonder what to do. It was obvious that I wanted no part of that thing, so I turned, grabbed the phone, and dialed 911. I told the operator we needed the fire department, hung up, and looked out the window again. Maybe twenty seconds had passed and flames had enveloped the carport ceiling. Pat was the only other person in the house. She was sleeping in our bedroom in the basement. I ran down, hollering, “Pat! Pat! Get out. Now! Right now!”

She came out of the bedroom, dazed from being asleep. Puzzled. “What?”

“Fire! We have to get out!”

I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door leading to the outside, then stopped. That terrible noise was still blasting. If we went out that door, we’d have to go right under that blazing propane tank. I had no idea what happens to burning propane tanks, but I was afraid that one thing might be that they blow up. I changed directions and went up the stairs, pulling Pat behind me.

Emerging onto the main floor’s hallway, I ducked reflexively. Dark, dense, coal-black smoke was roiling from the kitchen, across the dining room ceiling, and through the hall. It looked like one of those videos of tornado clouds churning over the Oklahoma plains, but this was inside our house. We ran out the front door.

As soon as we stopped, Pat remembered that Layla, our dog, was still in the house. I’d read all those stories about people dying going back into a house to get something left behind. I didn’t want to do that. The jet engine had shut down – no more screaming from the propane tank. Flames were shooting from under the carport, but not from the house yet. I ran around to the back and carefully looked in the basement door. No smoke or flames. I felt a presence behind me. It was Pat. We found Layla in the bedroom, still sleeping. Pat got her purse and we ran back outside and to the front again.
The fire trucks were there. Firemen were going about their work in a businesslike fashion – calmly unreeling hoses and other equipment. White smoke was pouring from the attic vents all around the house. A fireman asked, “Is there anybody else in there?”

‘No,” Pat and I said together. Our oldest daughter attended the University of Georgia and rented her own house. Kalli, our second daughter, was at Young Harris College in the north Georgia mountains. Our youngest, Mariah, lived with us but had spent the night elsewhere. Her car wasn’t in the driveway.

But, still . . . I said, “A daughter lives with us. She was away last night. I’m sure she’s not in there. Her car’s gone . . . .” What if something had happened to her car and she was home?

The fireman was ahead of me. “Which room is hers?”

I pointed. “There. The one in the corner.”

He ran, yelling at other firemen. Several went through the front door, masks on. Soon, windows opened in the bedroom where I’d pointed. Smoke poured from it. Seconds later, a fireman emerged. “All clear!.”

The fire was still raging in the carport area, but everybody was safe. I retrieved my cell phone and called Doug, one of my alcoholic friends. We learned in treatment to call another recovering alcoholic when we’re vulnerable to taking a drink. I had no desire to drink at that moment, but I didn’t want to develop one. Calling another alcoholic is like preventative maintenance on our car. Doug commiserated. He said, “Sounds like a ‘life on life’s terms’ deal.”

That’s what it was. Exactly.

The firemen did a wonderful job. They extinguished the fire quickly. The burned portion of the house was limited to the carport and half the kitchen ceiling. Pat and I figured we’d be misplaced for a couple of weeks while that was fixed. We were wrong. State Farm referred us to Mark Tatum, a contractor who specialized in restoring houses damaged by fire or water. He arrived shortly after the firemen left. It turns out smoke is just as damaging to a house as fire. Mark said all the roof and the rafters would have to be replaced. The house would be stripped to its studs and brick and rebuilt. We’d be back in it in six months.

OK. We had to find somewhere to live. Weird. One minute you’re cooking lunch and sleeping, the next you’re out on the street. A nearby Holiday Inn had some rooms with kitchenettes, so we went there until we could find a rental house. Pat and I spent an arduous, tiring, truly awful week digging through soot-laden possessions and taking an inventory of our unsalvageable property. That was almost everything we owned. Smoke permeated most things so badly that he odor couldn’t be removed. The gut-wrenching part was going through our children’s memorabilia collected during the last 25 years. A lot of their stuff was in the attic. The storage containers had melted due to the intense heat. Nearly everything was ruined. We were keeping it to pass on to their children some day. The stuff that represented their childhoods were gone. The emotional toll on us was massive.

During those six months from the moment I looked out my kitchen door window to investigate that awful howling sound until we moved back into our house, accepting life on life’s terms became a way of life. Being displaced, losing irreplaceable memorabilia, continually facing massive paperwork required by the insurance company to replace the things we’d lost, and dealing with all of the issues of rebuilding produced plenty of opportunities for pain, despair, and anxiety—all those things I used to get rid of by drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, and eating Snickers. Each day I worked on living life on life’s terms. I focused on gratitude. I was grateful for the wonderful claims adjuster, Natalie. Mark Tatum did a great job with the rebuild. My colleagues at work provided tangible and emotional support that helped to sustain me.

Everything I’d learned to help me stay sober for nearly two years helped me to live life on life’s terms on the day I burned my house and all the days that followed. They helped me sit with my father when my eighty-year-old mother was in and out of consciousness because of kidney failure. She recovered, but it was tough – a life on life’s terms thing. They helped me accept my heart disease and accept the possibility of keeling over dead as I run every day from the disease. I run to keep the disease in check, but while I’m running my odds of heart attack are seven times higher than when I’m sitting. But, the running makes my odds of having a heart attack significantly smaller while I’m sitting. That’s the way it is. Trading forty-five minutes of risk for being safer the other 23 hours and fifteen minutes is another life on life’s terms thing.

The list goes on and on. Every day brings those deals. That’s always been true. The difference now is that I accept them – not always easily, but always eventually. I have to. If I don’t, I’ll be back to booze, cigarettes, and Snickers, and I never, ever want to go back to those things again.