The morning after a Sunday night house-fire took the lives of their family, Wallace Boddy and his wife, Virginia, found themselves sifting through the ashes for photographs and listening to passersby try and put into words feelings of sympathy.

The Boddys lost their son-in-law, Albert Bass, 65, two granddaughters, Teri Deal, 45, and Kathy Bass, 43 and a great grandson, 11-year-old Adrian Bass, when their Borden Springs home at 67 County Road 230 caught fire some time around 9:30 or 10 p.m., according to Cleburne County Coroner Rudy Rooks.

“How can you describe and express the feelings of something like this,” said Wallace Boddy. “You might scrape the surface a little, but words sometimes can’t really explain and describe how the family feels.”

Rooks said they are awaiting autopsies but he believed the fire to be accidental. State fire marshals will be conducting an investigation of what is left of the wood-framed structure, known as the old Borden Springs Post Office, to determine the cause of the blaze.

In an unimaginably cruel twist the Boddys lost a daughter, Cheryl – Albert Bass’ wife – two weeks ago to a heart attack.

Boddy believes his family died quickly from smoke inhalation after the quick-moving fire engulfed the small home. Albert, Kathy and Adrian Bass were found in their beds. Terri Deal was found in the back of the home where she was taking a shower.

The family said they have been overwhelmed with people stopping to offer words of encouragement and prayer.

“I’ve never seen such an outpouring of sympathy and of kindness and tenderness and care that I have heard today,” said Boddy.

Boddy described a trip into town Monday morning to get something to eat. He spent the morning digging through the rubble looking for anything salvageable, and his hands were blackened with soot from the fire. He asked an employee where he could wash his hands and when he told her where the ash was from the waitress said, “Oh, I’ve heard about that”.

“Then she went through all kinds of wonderful feelings and blessings. People just don’t know what to say. Something this terrible … they don’t know what to say,” said Broddy.

A guitar case emerged from the blackened house badly singed, and as the case was opened the family was stunned to see the blonde-topped acoustic guitar’s surface still glossy and untouched by the heat. Boddy believes it must have belonged to Adrian.

“I asked my wife driving up here, ‘How in the world did we go from an absolutely loving, happy family to this kind of a disaster in two weeks,’” said Boddy. “They read a lot of the Bible and we discussed a lot of things.”

Music and faith – that is how Boddy remembers his family. He said they were a close, loving family who attended the Piedmont Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Their daughter, Cheryl, was a musician and would often accompany her family on singings across the country when she was younger.

“She was a pianist. One of the finest pianists,” Said Boddy. “She would accompany me. She had a touch. Her teacher said she has the most beautiful touch to the piano. It was completely different from everybody. We would get to the end of the song. And she was right with me on every note. And if I stopped to hold the note she knew it, she didn’t run ahead. And when we’d finished I remember that I would look over at the piano to her, and she would look at me and we would say, we did it again, didn’t we?”

As the family prepared to pack what they were able to find – photographs and paperwork, the guitar and bits of clothes – into their car, talk turned to faith.

“I know we all have a life planned for us by God when we’re born. The Bible tells us that our names are in the Book of Life, when we’re born. That’s our God’s plan for us. I’ve talked to my children and my grandchildren so many times about that. How to live a life,” said Boddy.

Wayne Ruple of The Cleburne News contributed to this article.