The Leftovers

Or, what's recoverable after a 2,000+ degree fire.

“I love you to the moon and back.”

This metal plaque hung in our son’s room. I found it on the floor of the garage under 4 inches of ash, almost directly below where it had been hanging.

Finding this was…emotional.

My favorite mug.

I drank out of this mug every day. In the morning, I filled it with coffee, sometimes three cups. After that, it was honey and hot water for the rest of the working day.

My wife and I got this mug at Frasca, a posh restaurant in Boulder, after eating in one of their pandemic-compliant outdoor pods for Valentine’s Day in 2021. I found it inside the skeletal remains of our dishwasher.

It holds spoons.

This sat next to our stovetop. I saw it when I peered down into the basement during my excavation mission. So I found a way to get down there and retrieve this spoon holder. Hopeful we could use it again, I took it to our rental house and washed it four times. It still smelled of smoke, and was thus relegated to the pile of memorabilia.

Serving utensils.

We used these almost daily as we sat around the dinner table. We’d alternate between using those tongs in the middle, and that two-spoon combo to the right, to dish out salad, broccoli, asparagus, or whatever else needed dishing out. I also found these in the basement when I climbed in there. By my recollection, they fell straight down from where we kept them in the kitchen just above.

Me, in my rain, I mean hazmat, suit on the day I pulled these things from the remnants of our house.

By rule of thumb, if it was born in a kiln or is metal, it has a good chance of surviving a 2,000+ degree fire. None of it is reusable, though. At least not for us. But it’s nice to have these things to remember. Maybe we’ll create some sort of shrine out of them. Or maybe we’ll put them in a box. Or maybe we can create art with them. We’ll see.