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Son repeats agonizing line to mom suffering from memory loss: 'Your house burned down.'

All that remains of Shasta resident Julie Hirst's property is a pool.

SHASTA, Calif. – When Julie Hirst’s husband died almost 10 years ago, she squashed any idea her grown children had about this being an opportune time for her to move to a retirement home, where living was sure to be easier on her ailing body. 

“I will never leave this place,” she declared. “Harry built this place for me, and I feel close to him here.” 

Harry Hirst built the house, perched atop winding Iola Drive off Rock Creek Road, in 1977. He later added a 100,000-gallon pool and poolhouse, and garage with attached bedroom and greenhouse. Even after being diagnosed a few years ago with dementia-like symptoms – notably short-term memory loss – Julie refused to go. Harry and Julie raised children in that house, and their grandkids spent as much time there as at their own homes. How could she ever leave? 

More:Blazing west to east, the Carr Fire consumed land and lives along Highway 299

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But come July 26, how could she not?

Bruce Hirst, Julie’s oldest son and her primary caregiver for the last decade, awoke to an alert on his phone around 1 a.m. Tired and groggy, he wondered how seriously he should take the warning. By 1:30, a friend had told him it was real, and he needed to get himself, and his mom, out. 

A reader took this photo around 12:20 a.m. from the corner of Rock Creek Road and Benson Drive in the Keswick and Old Shasta area.

While Diane, his wife, packed up their home just a quarter-mile down the road, Bruce got 91-year-old Julie dressed and into the car. He described her as “mostly compliant,” but she doesn’t have the energy of youth; she can’t move from one spot to another without help. It took almost 40 minutes to load Julie, 5-foot-9 and 140 pounds, in the car. Bruce grabbed her slippers, a robe and some clothes for the next week. He took no sentimental valuables. 

“I was sort of in denial about the house maybe burning down,” he admitted. 

Within 24 hours, Bruce faced a brutal reality: Not only had his mother’s home burned to the ground – his and Diane’s house is still standing – but now they’d have to recreate her life mostly from scratch. Making matters worse is Julie’s short-term memory loss. Since the fire, Julie has woken up almost every day disoriented about where she is and why she’s there, relying on Bruce to explain what happened. 

Shasta resident Julie Hirst's home was destroyed in the Carr Fire.

So for the last three weeks, Bruce has relived the sorrow of his mom’s home going up in flames – and watched as she remembers it, too. 

As Bruce explained this, tears sprang to Diane’s eyes. She put her hand to her mouth and took a deep breath. “I’m going to cry,” she said softly. 

More:Battling wildfires year-round is now the norm. How did we get here?

It has been, understandably and not uniquely, a rough few weeks for the Hirst family. 

“When we found out what happened, it was more a decision about are we going to tell her instead of how,” he said. “We thought about not telling her, but then we’d be lying.” 

He didn’t want to do that. But they can’t just say Julie’s house is gone, they need to tell her why. So they explain that the historic fire barreled down on their neighborhood faster than anyone anticipated and mention other people – longtime friends who Julie remembers – who also lost their homes. That helps her feel like she’s not alone, or singled out, in this tragedy.  

This is the view from Rock Creek Road.

There are times, Bruce and Diane say, that Julie gets noticeably depressed. They tell her everything is gone, including her grand piano (Julie played the organ at church for 45 years, before she became mostly immobile) and photos of Harry. Sometimes she refuses to eat or drink and won’t get out of bed. That happened a lot for the few days they were stuck in a hotel, waiting for the evacuation to lift. 

And that depression is totally normal, according to Sharon Clark of Redding Home Helpers. 

A caregiving agency that currently works with more than 200 clients in the Redding area, Home Helpers has been contracted by the Hirst family for the last few years, working regularly with Julie and checking in on her when Bruce, a CPA, and Diane, who runs his office, are at work. 

“This is a grief process,” Clark said. “We had a national disaster in our community, and we need to acknowledge that trauma and that it’s OK to feel this way. But also, we need to get these people back into a routine – let’s get them watching their shows, let’s get them eating the same breakfast. When you’re evacuating and packing things up, if you can grab their favorite coffee cup or the quilt that’s on their bed, those comfort items go a long way.” 

Shasta resident Julie Hirst's home was destroyed in the Carr Fire.

Clark added that the evacuations served notice to multiple families in and outside of Redding thattheir elderly family members might need more help than they knew. 

“I’m anticipating that in the next few weeks, I’m going to get a lot of calls from adult children who realized, through this, that their parents are in worse shape than they realized,” Clark said. “A lot of times they sound fine on the phone, but you need to be thinking beyond that – the question should always be, ‘If there was an emergency, would this elderly family member be able to evacuate themselves?’ ” 

If the answer is no, Clark said, call her. 

After a couple of chaotic weeks – Bruce’s office was also evacuated for a short time –  the Hirsts are working off a new game plan. Julie moved into Shasta Estates, a retirement center, where she’s still visited daily by Home Helpers. Bruce spends half his day there, including nights, because waking up in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people is disorienting and upsetting to Julie. Bruce’s presence steadies her. He typically returns for lunch at Shasta Estates, too.

“I feel like in the morning, it takes about a five-minute routine to ‘boot up her brain,’ ” Bruce said. “But we’re hopeful that in a couple months, we won’t have to explain the fire every day because she’ll get familiar with her new space. And we hope that soon she likes this place even better than her house.” 

They’re still getting Julie settled, buying furniture and decor for her new apartment. While chatting, Bruce pulled out two crumpled pieces of paper from his shorts pocket, showing off the to-do and to-buy list for his mom. Every time he crosses off some items, he laughed. He remembers five more things he needs to get.

It’s a new normal for everyone, and it’ll take time to adjust. But a few days after Julie moved into Shasta Estates, Diane unearthed three items she thought would help the process. So she framed the photos of Harry – which she found buried in her and Bruce’s trove of pictures – and hung them on Julie’s new, empty wall. 

“I know you miss your house,” Diane told her mother-in-law, “but I thought this would help you feel close to Harry again.”

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