Lost Things

One of my favorite poems is Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art, a lesson on lost things. For me there have been many things, places and people dropped or misplaced long before I noticed their absence as well as those lost suddenly, leaving rough, tender places that I had to protect. I clearly recall the moment I lost my cashmere lined leather gloves as I stood up to get off the train at my subway stop. Annoyed, I knew they were gone as the doors closed behind me, comforted only by the notion that at least someone would find an intact pair. Those gloves are the only pair I’ve ever lost. I wear out umbrellas, I have no sock graveyard filled with loners looking for their match, yet I’ve lost plenty of things besides those gloves. 

 
Loss is something I’m familiar with, and I generally don’t mourn the loss of objects when I realize they’re gone, but that doesn’t stop me from getting frustrated trying to recall where a particular item might be, or when exactly I last had my hands on it. If you’re like me, when you look for something you conduct a drawer by drawer or room by room search. When I realized I’d lost my little blue book I systematically went through every bookshelf, touching the spine of each book, then I went through all of those pesky boxes I’ve moved from house to house for years.

 
I don’t have much that belonged to my mother. When she died most of her belongings were quickly removed from the house. I don’t know who did this, but it felt like every trace of her was erased as if she’d never been there. There are a few precious things of hers I still have, though I don’t know how I got them, or who gave them to me. I know it wasn’t my father; we never spoke of her unless I needed to ask a question (usually medical) and those were always met with one or two word answers. The topic of my mother was emphatically off limits.

 
One of her belongings I had for many years was a gorgeous, black and grey Persian lamb coat. It was an A-line, mid-calf length coat with bell sleeves and a heavy silk lining. Though I wore it sometimes, it was exhausting. My mother was much taller than I am; on me the coat went almost to my ankles and it weighed a ton. One cold winter day when I was in my twenties I wore it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and didn’t check it and by the end of the day I felt like I had walked a hundred miles carrying a sack of potatoes.

 
I have no idea where that coat is now, or when I had it last. This is one of those items I mourn. I loved wearing something she’d worn, knowing it had kept us both warm; knowing we’d been wrapped in the same skin. (Apologies to PETA, but this was a coat from the late 1950s.) When I wrack my brain about its whereabouts I come up empty. I think of possible options; some random dry cleaner’s, the back of a closet from one of my many past apartments, or a box at my parents’ home that was sold a few years ago; no matter where it is, it is lost to me.

 
It seems like each time I move, or do a big clean out something is inadvertently misplaced. I used to have a pretty chair that had been my grandmother’s. I can hardly recall the last house I had it in. It would be nice in my bedroom and I hope wherever it is it’s improved its surroundings, as I was glad when I lost those gloves that I’d lost the pair and maybe someone who desperately needed gloves might find them, and be grateful for them. Could my loss at least be someone’s gain? I hope someone is enjoying that coat and that chair.

 
Losses come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are annoying and can be a great inconvenience; others haunt us, forgotten for a while until something stirs a memory and the longing comes back in a rush of frustration or self-recrimination. “Why wasn’t I more careful with that coat, ring, or bundle of letters?” Some losses rather than having shape, shape us. Losing my job with Whole Foods Market caused me great pain and took years to fully recover from; I’m still not sure in what ways that loss has changed me, but I know it has.

 
For Geneen Roth losing her savings not only turned her world upside down, it changed her view of it. When I think about losing my parents, each death had a great impact on me (I had and lost three) but it was the loss of my mother when I was barely able to process what forever meant that has been the single most formative loss I’ve experienced. My daughter is just beginning to struggle with the loss of her country, the siblings she may have, and a part of her identity I can’t provide for her. It is those early losses that leave the greatest imprint. I am the amalgam of all my losses, from the trivial to the catastrophic, and without them I would be someone else entirely. I am more than that of course; I am the sum of all the crazy, happy, sad, funny, interesting, horrible and frightening things I’ve experienced. I’d love to know what became of that coat, or my blue book, but for now I will accept that loss is part of moving forward, and even when I pause to look back, it doesn’t stop my progress.