Sarah Ray will always remember the scratches on the bedroom wall. She would gaze at them each night before going to bed, thinking of her husband, who died just two years ago. It was the hospice bed that left the marks.
“My husband always got mad at me because I would always mess up the little remote thing, and it would scratch the wall,” Ray said of her husband, Casey. “We would laugh about it. He died of a brain tumor. He could no longer talk, but he still had his joy. So he taught me about suffering and having joy together.”
Now the scratches are etched into Sarah Ray’s memory, but that is all that is left of them. Her house is gone – consumed by the Eaton fire that ripped through Altadena, California, northeast of Los Angeles, this past week.
Also gone is the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that hung in the Rays’ bedroom.
“My kids last night said, ‘Oh, Mom, we need to get the picture of Mary so she will keep us safe,’” Ray told Aleteia. She and her four children – ages 2 to 11 – are in the midst of a series of temporary homes as they begin to navigate an uncertain future.
Most of their physical possessions are turned to ash, but what survives – Casey Ray’s lessons of faith and resilience – are getting his widow and his kids through the most difficult time of their lives.
So is what Sarah Ray calls “an amazing Catholic support group” – parents and grandparents of children who attend a classical Catholic school, St. Monica’s Academy in Montrose. Several members of the group also lost everything in the fire, one of several that have devastated Los Angeles in the past week, leaving at least 11 dead and thousands homeless.
The St. Monica’s group also includes Jacqueline and Peter Halpin, whose family was seen in a viral video, singing a Latin Marian hymn in front of their burned-out lot. The Rays, the Halpins, and others Aleteia spoke with experienced wildfires in the past, but always had a home to return to.
“We've had fires before, but the firefighters always keep it in the hills,” said Elizabeth Foldi Bulgarini, who ran a restaurant/gelateria in town with her husband, Leo Bulgarini, and whose son, Lorenzo, is a junior at St. Monica’s.
Foldi Bulgarini’s mother passed away on Christmas Eve, and she was preparing music for the funeral when fire approached.
“The only reason I have my violin is because I grabbed it for my mom's funeral,” she said.
Not only did the Bulgarinis lose so many precious mementos, such as family photos, but Foldi Bulgarini’s mother’s home was destroyed as well.
“Everything was gone – from her entire lifetime,” she said. “I think the only saving grace was that she was not alive to see this.”
Healing harmony
The Halpin family, which had on their property a main house and a small guesthouse, where their daughter lived, also found practically nothing but ashes when they returned after the fire.
“It looks like a war zone,” Peter Halpin told Aleteia. “Just for miles, in all directions, the whole community, probably. I don't know, 80% of Altadena is wiped out. I mean, it's block after block after block.”
Jacqueline Halpin said she “just wanted to pray” in front of the property.
“We gathered around the statue [of Mary on the front lawn], and we have a family prayer that many families have – consecration to the Sacred Heart – and we said the prayer, and then it was like, ‘Well, let's sing.’”
Peter, 65, said that his own parents had taught their nine children how to sing traditional Latin hymns in harmony, and he and Jacqueline have carried on the tradition with their six children.
“We can sing spontaneously, and that's one thing about families that sing together. There's something beautiful and magical about it, because there tends to be a beautiful harmony with family members that can sing together.”
Their children are in their 30s and 40s, and they have 14 grandchildren, some of whom now attend St. Monica’s.
A neighbor caught the hymn on video, and it went “viral” on the internet, but Jacqueline said it was not intended for that, but was just a spontaneous moment. It was, however, “very healing” for her.
Now, she said, she is “trying to concentrate on gratitude, because there are people way worse off than we are.
Foldi Bulgarini said that other members of the St. Monica’s group have been offering rooms for people to stay in, clothes, financial assistance, and perhaps most importantly, prayer.
“They've been praying for us, and that is so important,” she said, “because it's the only thing that's getting us through.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up to support the families.
