I walk into my house coming home from school, thinking that the unfortunate feeling I had was from the disturbing conversations I had heard throughout the day, as I had forgotten my headphones at home.

But as I open the door, I hear my mother, sounding slightly upset, talking to someone. I assume that it's my brother being scolded again for not doing some assignment or another.

I enter the living room and find my mom on the phone, both her and my brother staring at the TV screen. The news was playing and I silently read the headline as had that sickening feeling worsen.

Notre Dame Cathedral Burned, Collapsed.

Spire Falls on Burning Notre Dame.

I stare silently at the television in disbelief.

No. This can't be happening.

I don't know who my mom is talking to on the phone- someone who understands us enough to know why my family is affected by this.

While we're not French, we have lived in Europe for a long time. I'm fifteen, and ten of those years have been in Europe and only five in America, my technical mother country. The first place we lived in Europe was Belgium, and when we first moved my parents were so miserable in our boiling, cheap hotel room we packed up and drove two hours to Paris. We have been at LEAST a half dozen times, to the point that the last trips I remember we did barely any sightseeing and just explored instead. But even on our last trip, we had gone to see Notre Dame and meet some old family friends that were also in town there. We understood it's significance and how personal this was to the French.

800 years the cathedral had been there. It withstood two world wars and at least one revolution. Gunshots, cannonballs, bombs and beheadings, the church was not just a tourist attraction like the Eiffel Tower. It had a history that represented the endurance of the French.

How does a stone church even burn?! I think angrily to myself, hating the facts that were laid before me. Yet the newscaster was explaining it as I watched- the wooden structures on the inside had caught fire, and the only reason the fire was out not was because it had exhausted itself of fuel. They say that the cause has not yet been discovered. They go to on talk about how the roof had been weakened by acid rain and how there had been preparations in progress to start to restore it. Scaffolding had been put up, which half of it was now gone with the roof.

They say that it has been only a few minutes after closing when the fire was discovered.

Was it another horrible, oblivious, disgusting tourist disrespecting this place again? I think furiously, knowing of the other wonderful historic landmarks I had been to that had part of the experience ruined by disrespectful foreigners.

My mom gets off the phone. She stares at the screen a little more before wiping her eyes. I can't imagine what she's feeling- she actually remembered going to these places, unlike me who had only been there as a young child and had instead had my brain filled with mindless facts in school and forced me to forget these life experiences.

She shakes her head, feeling the same disbelief I did. "All the artwork inside is gone," she stated without tone. "They couldn't save it. The pipe organ that was in there, all the paintings, the floors..."

I go back to the kitchen and find a package of cookies. I once heard that chocolate can make someone feel happy, so I take a few in hopes to relieve this crushing feeling. But even the cookies are half-baked and I know no amount of chocolate chips can help this.

My mom gets up as well, whether to distract herself or to do something I don't know.

"This is the exact reason Big Ben in London is under construction as well. Goes to show you how they waited just a little too long to start repairs. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end..." she says aloud, more to herself than anything. "An omen that this is it."

Then she walks into the dining room and starts putting a few miscellaneous items away. It's where I now sit, hearing the news continue its broadcast and interviews of Parisians on this fateful day while I type this memoir that sounds like a story, but it's what just happened in the past half hour that I've been home from school. I don't know what my mom meant by that, and I'm afraid to find out.