Hajime White’s father Anthony Mitchell and her brother Justin died last year when the Eaton fire engulfed their Altadena home

Anthony Mitchell.Credit : Hajime White

For Christmas, Hajime White’s daughters gifted her a stuffed green frog. When she hugs it, the frog plays the final voicemail message her father left her before he and her younger brother, who had cerebral palsy, were killed in the Eaton fire last year.

“I don’t have anything of my dad,” White, now 51, tells PEOPLE. “The only thing I have to hold onto now is that frog with my dad’s voice inside.”

“He’s not here, but he’s here,” she adds. “He’s telling me again, ‘Merry Christmas and I love you.’ ”

Her father, Anthony Mitchell, a 68-year-old amputee, and her brother Justin Mitchell, 35, both died when the wildfire engulfed their California home.

“My father died a hero, not leaving my brother alone,” she says. “He would have done it for any of us. I’m not mad at my dad for what he did — it just gave me more love for my dad, because he made sure that the baby of the family didn’t go by himself.”

Anthony and Justin Mitchell.Courtesy of Hajime White

A year ago today, White was logging onto her work computer in Arkansas when her father called and told her that he needed to evacuate his home, but that was going to be difficult since both he and his son were wheelchair-bound.

By the time he hung up, the fire was in their yard.

She waited for her father to call back, but the call never came.

“After I got off the phone, I started feeling it in my chest — moving around my heart. You know how when paper is crumbling? That’s how my chest was feeling,” she says.

Then her other brother — Jordan Mitchell, who was in the hospital when the fires broke out — called and told her: “Dad and Justin didn’t make it out.”

A year later, White says that listening to her father’s 911 call asking for help is like “reliving a nightmare.”

“I’m thinking about how they were sitting there waiting for help — and no one came,” she says.

Visualizing their last moments is equally painful. “I see the flames,” she says. “I imagine my dad sitting there in the wheelchair and flames coming out of him. And I think about my brother laying there and flames coming out of him.”

She hopes that they didn’t feel any pain, but she fears that’s not how their story came to an end.

As her healing journey continues, White says that she has “some good days,” but others where the emotions are too much.

“My husband says I jump in my sleep. My daughters keep more of an eye on me now,” she says. “When I’m home alone I get scared, I get frightened, I cry, I’ll scream.”

To keep them close, she erected a kind of shrine in her Warren, Ark., home. Inside she keeps a bottle of Crown Royal and a cigar for her dad — and she always keeps a bag of chips on hand for her brother.

She also often finds herself wearing green, the color of her father’s eyes.

The plushie that plays her father’s final voicemail to her was also green — as was a stuffed dragon she picked up at Walmart that makes her think of her late brother. “I picked it up and I couldn’t let it go,” she says. “I was consoled by it.”

Hajime White; her two special stuffed animals that honor her late family members.Courtesy of Hajime White (2)

A GoFundMe has been established to help White and her family during this difficult time — and a separate one was started for her surviving brother, who shared an update of his own as the one-year anniversary approached.

In his update, Jordan wrote that the grim milestone brought back painful memories of “waking up in the hospital to the devastating news that my entire immediate family had passed away and that my home had completely burned down.”

However, he noted that “in the midst of that darkness, a light shown…this community.”

“I remember thinking of my friends as real-life Avengers, assembling to support me and creating this fundraiser,” Jordan wrote, adding that he has “no words to express my gratitude” to those who helped him.

“The love and support you showed up with during the hardest year of my life has meant everything to me,” he wrote. “Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to each and every one of you.”