She recalled that day as if it had been the day before. It could have been, for all she knew. It was a summer day, her sons and her husband were in vacations, and were still sleeping when she left to run some errands. She returned an hour later to find her house, surrounded by firefighters, turned into ashes. Her first impulse was to run inside, to look for her family, but the firefighters stopped her. It was too late anyway, all the bodies had been already removed. The fire had started abruptly and violently, her family had been trapped inside and they died from a combination of burns and poisoning. Hearing that hurt as much as seeing them laid out in the morgue, and almost as much as burying them.
In a heartbeat, everything that gave sense to her life was gone. She retracted into a shell, not letting anyone in. She was staying with her sister while she recovered from the trauma, but most of the days they would not even talk. She wouldn't talk to anybody, actually, deep in a sullen silence.
The days passed and nothing made her change. Her mind was an infinite loop of wondering what would happen to her life now that she didn't have anything. She could have gone back to her pottery, the one she used to live of, but she didn't have the strenght to go to the crafts shop and buy more supplies. So she spent the days staring at the window, flinching when smoke rose from the earth.
Weeks passed, and she was still like that. One day, looking through the window, she saw an old beggar looking through the garbage for food. And, for the first time in months, she connected with him. He was hopeless, as she was, and he was alone, like she was. That man was the answer of all her questions. She decided to volunteer for the local shelter, in that way she would have a reason to live, something to care for.
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