There are years that divide your life into a before and an after.

For me, 2026 became that year.

In January, the wildfire that swept through Epuyén destroyed the home where Maru and I had lived for five years. It was much more than a house. We had built our home, our studio, and our everyday life there. It was where our little family grew, surrounded by the forest and the community of Bosque Gracias, a place we had chosen not just to live, but to belong.

When the fire was finally over, the landscape was almost impossible to recognize. The forest had turned to ash, and our home was gone. Like so many other families, we had to begin again from nothing.

The provincial government announced that new houses would be built for people who had lost everything. We believed we would be among them.

We weren't.

The land where our house stood wasn't legally ours. Even though we had helped build the house, lived there for five years, and called it home, we were excluded from the reconstruction program because we didn't own the property.

It was a painful reality to accept.

We hadn't just lost a house. We had lost the place where we imagined our future.

A friend offered us a small studio apartment while we tried to figure out what came next.

We believed the worst was behind us.

We were wrong.

During those months, our dog Roger was killed by a neighbor's dog.

Even now, writing that sentence hurts.

We were still trying to gather the pieces of our lives when we lost another member of our family.

Then our community held us up once again.

Bosque Gracias has never been just a place. It is a way of living, creating, and taking care of one another. Rocío and her family offered us the house the government had built for them. Since they were temporarily living in domes while rebuilding their own home, they invited us to stay there instead.

Because of them, we were able to return to the forest with our animals.

For a brief moment, life felt like it was beginning to settle again.

It lasted twenty days.

One morning we lit the wood stove, just as we always did. About twenty minutes later, we smelled smoke.

When we saw the flames, we did everything we could to stop them. We ran in and out of the house trying to put the fire out until it became impossible to go back inside. By then, the house was completely engulfed.

All we could do was watch.

As the fire consumed our home, we kept telling ourselves that maybe Chopi and the cats had escaped without us noticing. It was the only hope we had left.

Hilacha survived. She had spent the night outside in her little shelter, and that simple coincidence saved her life.

We waited.

Hours passed.

They never came.

When we were finally able to get close to the house, we learned that Chopi, Boldo, Rudi, and Totoro had been trapped inside.

There are kinds of grief for which language still has no words.

Maru and I shared more than ten years with them. They grew up alongside us. They were there through every move, every project, every joyful moment, and every difficult one. They had survived the first wildfire with us.

We never imagined we would lose them only twenty days after finding our way back home.

The days that followed became a blur of investigators, officials, neighbors, friends, and endless questions.

The first findings point to a chain of failures: a poorly built wood stove, a defective installation, and construction materials that may not have been suitable. Perhaps one day we will know exactly how the fire began.

But no explanation changes the outcome.

It has only been two days since the second fire.

I still smell smoke.

Sometimes I wake up expecting to hear Chopi walking through the house or one of the cats waiting for breakfast. Then I remember the house is gone, and so are they.

In less than a year, we lost our home twice.

And this time, we also lost Chopi, Boldo, Rudi, and Totoro.

I'm not writing these words because I've found meaning in what happened.

I haven't.

I'm writing because I need there to be a record that they existed. That they were loved. That they were part of our family for more than a decade.

A house can be rebuilt.

Some absences cannot.

I don't know what tomorrow will look like.

Today, two days after the fire, I'm simply trying to survive the grief.