Billy Crystal and his wife Janice have lost their home of over four decades to the Pacific Palisades fire.

“Janice and I lived in our home since 1979. We raised our children and grandchildren here. Every inch of our house was filled with love. Beautiful memories that can’t be taken away.”

This one hit me hard. I wish what Billy said was true, but it isn’t that simple. As we get older, it gets very difficult to remember everything clearly. When people say “a house full of memories”, what they really mean is a “a house full of memory triggers”. Mr. Crystal, his wife, and his children have lost a lot of those triggers to the fire.

I might be silly and sentimental, but this made me genuinely very sad.

  • Jo MiranOP
    186·
    15 hours ago

    If that’s what you got out of my post, then you missed the point. Yes, Billy Crystal is getting press because he’s a celebrity but what really hits hard is the loss of a home of 46 years. Nobody is rich enough to replace the irreplaceable, and many people with a lot less means than they are also losing generational homes. It is that irreplaceable loss that hits hard.

    I was dirt poor when a hurricane devastated my home literally two weeks after my mother had died. It wasn’t the fact that I uad to live with relatives for months that hurt, it was that all but one photo album covering my mother’s life and most of my childhood were ruined. Material losses hurt but emotional losses are devastating, and they know no social class.

    Don’t let your heart harden by putting people in groups of “others”.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      32·
      14 hours ago

      This isn’t to detract from your larger “it sucks to have your house burn down” point, but specifically for photo albums, it’s fairly reasonable to have an off-site backup these days. Don’t even need fancy cloud storage or anything, if you don’t want to worry about data harvesting or leaks or whatever – can just get yourself a USB key drive and a safe deposit box. Hell, even just drop them off with a relative or something.

      I think that most people have at least some things that they can be sure won’t be lost in a disaster like a house fire, so worth thinking about. I’m not saying that everyone has actually done that, but I do think that it’s a good thing to maybe think about doing.