Emily’s arms wrapped around the firefighter’s waist, one eye straining a glance toward the home she once recognized. Planting her feet firmly, the sensations came fast, first the heat, then the dancing blur of firelight. Loud pops and cracks of wood splitting to an inferno snapped her fully back to consciousness.
The next sensation seemed to rise from the pit of her stomach. Her friend Cindy had come to visit for a sleepover. She spun frantically around to look for the pink fluffy bathrobe Cindy had fallen asleep wearing. She ran to a group of firefighters crouched down by someone. She screamed “mommy!” Her mom was breathing with a mask but very evidently alive. The fireman followed quickly behind, knelt and asked. “Listen, this is very important. Is anyone else in the house?” She couldn’t say the name, but she nodded. “How many?” She held up 1 finger, still unable to speak.
Then she remembered, Cindy had fallen asleep in the storage space she referred to as her “secret hideout”. She tried to scream, but nothing came out. She ran around to get a better view, and began pointing. Nobody would pay attention in the madness of a fully engulfed blaze. She could not let her friend, her best friend, just die alone in hiding. She ran through the middle of the crowd and up the steps.
A firefighter, the one with questions, followed quickly on her heels. She ran into the house to the smell of burning wood. There was a sweetness to the smoke. It was then she realized what she had done. She and her friend had been making friendship cupcakes in the shapes of butterflies. Her easy-bake oven bulb had burned out and Cindy talked her into using the “real mommy oven”. When her mom walked in unexpectedly, she was frightened and defensive. “Are you guys up to something in here?” Terrified, she said the one word that would haunt her forever: “No”. She ran upstairs to avoid interrogation and forgot about the oven altogether.
This was a short, painful distraction as she plowed through the thick smoke and up the steps, the fireman close behind. With two turns and a bit of a stretch around the corner, the fireman could see a crumpled little body. He snatched her up and put the mask on her. Emily was elated to hear a cough.
As he ran down the stairs Emily could hear him whisper to Cindy, “I think you had a little angel looking out for you. “She was not prepared for what she saw next. Her mom sobbing, holding on to a small frame of a person. The fireman ran Cindy up to her, and Mom grabbed her tightly. As she draped Cindy over her shoulder, she could see the face of the other girl her mom had been hugging. It was her own.
In the briefest of moments her spirit lifted free and forgiven toward a light that dwarfed the fire’s glow. Had you been watching everything that night, you would have noticed a burning ember butterfly rising above the destruction. In a fitting tribute, her memorial began with a verse. “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13
