Help Antoinette Perry start over after the Eaton fire

As I'm sure all of you know, our family suffered an incomprehensible, devastating loss at the hands of the Eaton Fire earlier this week. Home to our family for almost 45 years, to children being born, growing up, leaving for college yet continuing to visit constantly since they couldn't stay away, to loving and trusting pets who knew no other home and are forever buried under its wreckage, to tens of thousands of hours of labor and love poured into art and music, to the art itself produced by said labor and love, the loss is infinitely greater than the loss of property or even of habitation, which are themselves immeasurably great losses.

While most of our mourning is for irreplaceable things that are permanently lost and can never be retrieved nor recreated, at the time of the disaster, our mom was still living there, still eating yogurt and homemade cereal looking out into the lush green yard with its birds and flowers, and still pouring her heart into the piano and into teaching students who will themselves go on to spread this labor of love and beauty into the world. In fact, this last part was so meaningful to her that she found a backdoor through the firefighting perimeter and almost attempted a rescue of the pianos with two incredibly selfless, heroic piano movers, only to be thwarted by the flames themselves as they advanced across the structure.

https://youtube.com/shorts/AIPVo3bKdXQ?feature=share

Here she was playing Schubert's Moments Musicaux 6 mere weeks before the Eaton fire. She often says she plays this piece to say goodbye. We never dreamed she would be saying goodbye to this house and her dream pianos—the most beautiful pianos she'd ever played.

While these unique, inexpressibly beautiful pianos can never be recovered nor replaced, nor can the home itself with all of its character and memories—of events big and small, of lives lived, of jubilations and hardships and tender moments—life must march on. A new life must be built. To that end, we would humbly ask for any support you might be able to give to our mom, especially so that she might be able to resume her life's work of playing and teaching, not to mention helping her replace essential things like clothes and a lifetime collection of hundreds of volumes of music books.

It is difficult to ask for more from such a supportive community who has given so much already, and yet this is so important to us (and to her, though she would never ask for a dime herself), that we are here to ask for whatever you might be willing to give to help. Her battle with insurance begins now, but it is already clear that the gap will be insurmountably large. The pianos were insured, but not nearly enough to replace even one of them in today's dollars. The same quality of home will almost certainly not be possible, to say nothing of its instruments, but given the immense generosity she has shown not only to us but to everyone in her life, as I'm sure many of you will attest, we would like to do whatever we can to lessen the hardship.

If you can't donate, thoughts and prayers and kind words of support are not just a disparaging turn of phrase on Instagram, but are genuinely appreciated. They have been worth the world these past few days.

Thanks everyone ❤️

–The Perry's