A grieving Calgary mother says she’s having difficulty keeping her emotions in check after losing everything she owned, including her late son’s ashes, in a recent apparent house explosion.
Trish Harris was one of several Calgarians living in a multi-unit dwelling on 34th Avenue NE who lost their homes the morning of March 23 in the community of Highland Park.
“The windows and doors in front of me just blew right out and shattered,” says Harris.
Calgary Fire is still investigating the cause of the blaze.
Harris says she’s been a wreck ever since, having faced a number of losses in her life in just a short time.
“They say everything happens in threes,” says Harris, who in just the last five months has not only lost her home, but also her boyfriend and her son. “So I’m hoping this is the last of it and I’ll have a fresh start.”
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Everything she’s owned is also gone, along with the ashes of her 28-year-old son Tyler, who passed away in February.
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Her boyfriend’s ashes are also gone. He passed away in October following a short battle with cancer.
“It’s all gone. I mean, of course I lost everything else but that’s, you know, the most important to me,” says Harris.
Harris’s daughter, Samantha Ramsey, says she hasn’t “quite finished” grieving her older brother, saying losing his ashes has impacted the entire family.
“Unfortunately, this has happened and all of us have lost a huge piece of our lives not only losing our brother physically, but we’ve lost, essentially we’ve lost him again because his ashes are gone,” she says.
Since the fire, Harris has been staying in hotels and says she’s even had to stay a night or two in her own vehicle.
Harris tells Global News that she didn’t have renters’ insurance.
“Its just trying to find a place and just not having the finances, you know, just nothing — it’s difficult,” says Harris. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”
Ramsey admits that it’s been equally as difficult to watch what her mother’s been going thorough this past week with no place to go.
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“I struggle because there’s not more that I can do. I don’t have a house that I can just be like, here, here’s a place for you to live. And I don’t have all the money that I can be like, here, I’ll pay for everything and make sure it’s all taken care of,” she says.
Samantha has, however, bought some essentials for mother and has since set up a GoFundMe with the hope of getting her back on her feet.
“I just want to see her in a home and stable and somewhere safe.”
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