The return of the lost
The other day I thought I’d lost my favorite earrings. That is, one of the pair of my favorite earrings, which are these.
I’ve had those earrings for at least twenty years, maybe thirty or forty years. Hard to say exactly, but a really long time. I had lost them (or one of them) twice before and purchased another pair many many years ago, which meant that for several years I had three of the earrings – a pair and a spare.
Then I lost another singleton, and I still had a pair to wear. You may ask why I didn’t wear earring protectors on the tips of the hooks, to prevent that from happening? I could say that it’s because I find those things really hard to put on because they require inordinate manual dexterity in an area you can’t see. And that would be true. But it’s also because I just don’t think to do it and I’m usually in a hurry, so I guess you’d call that laziness.
A couple of days ago I was out for a while, and when I returned and started to take my earrings off, there was only one to remove. I searched and searched and searched, and concluded that the other had fallen out on the street. I resigned myself to buying another pair – after all, they’re still available. But right before bedtime I saw something odd and shiny dangling from the bottom of my down jacket, near where the zipper pull is. It looked like my earring, and it was hanging by the proverbial thread.
Literally.
It appeared to be floating in air about three quarters of an inch below the bottom on the jacket. But when I got up close, I saw that a looping thread had come loose and was acting as picture hanging wire for the earring. How had the earring survived in that precarious position, hanging on for dear life? I don’t know, but there it was, reunited with its fellow.
An encouraging sign, if you’re looking for signs. And I am; I am.
A humorous story happened in our family many years ago when my dad was still living. He had given my mom an expensive watch and one day she went to put it on and it was missing. She looked everywhere and reluctantly told my dad who was mystified how she could have lost it without even realizing it but it was gone (apparently). Flash forward several years after my dad had passed my mom was going through her closet looking for a pair of shoes and what does she find? The long missing watch in one of the shoes. It had apparently slipped off her wrist without her even knowing it. My dad would have loved that and for the rest of my mom’s life whenever she claimed to lose something my response was ‘remember the watch’.
Brother-in-law looked everywhere for his wedding ring. Discovered in the underwear he was wearing.
Suggested he get ring re-sized.
I’ve lost one of every favorite pair of earrings and none were replaceable. The first was gold and it disappeared while my husband and I were cutting up 10 cord of wood by machine in the good old days when we were young. You might ask why I would wear gold earrings to chop wood. Once I have a favorite anything, I never leave it which is not to say they don’t leave me.
I was wondering, Neo, has anyone written an obituary for Gerard? My thoughts and prayers are still very much with both of you.
Next time you lose something, recite this good Catholic prayer to the patron saint of lost things:
Tony, Tony, come around
Something’s lost and must be found
Can’t hurt. . . .
I you like cheesy romantic comedies, check out an old favorite, Fools Rush In. “There are signs everywhere!”
I went for a walk yesterday and when I drove back home I couldn’t find my clear lens glasses in the car. Oh, they must have dropped out in the parking lot and have been run over by now. My new glasses with new prescription too.
But upon triple checking I discovered that the glasses in the black case were laying on the black carpeting under the driver’s seat which of course I could not see wearing sunglasses in a darkened garage.
Silly of me to believe such stuff; but, I do think Gerard may have been walking along side you, saw it drop, and found a way to “catch” it.
Years ago, during the Obamanation economy I could only find temp work; but a couple of months after my oldest brother passed away (I was his secondary caregiver after his wife – I gave her as many breaks as I could) I landed a permanent full-time job – again, silly of me to believe such stuff – but, I believe my brother may have pulled some strings upstairs to help me land the job.
As long as I don’t place bets on such “spiritual” intervention, I figure it doesn’t hurt to believe in such things. And it feels good to think well of those who have left us that they still look over us.
Life is made of such memories as we get older. I remember that my dad used to love buttermilk. He would always add some ground black pepper to it. Although he had passed away decades before I ended up in India for work I still thought of him when I had lassi, an Indian drink made with buttermilk, seasoned in south India where I was with chopped green chilies. I had an extra glass thinking he would have loved it.
While it still is painful to miss those who are gone; the memories do become sweeter with time. Neo, may your memories of Gerard become sweeter too.
If you feel so inclined, I’ve found Rachel Remen’s Audible on “The Will to Live and Other Mysteries” to be intriguing listen. She’s 85 now, and it was recorded in 2001, following the publication of her other two books, with this as the intro: “As an honored physician and teacher, Rachel Naomi Remen has spent a lifetime immersed in the world of science. Yet today, after four decades of face-to-face experience with cancer patients, medical academia, and her own chronic illness, she has come to see that life is best defined not by science, but by mystery.”
I felt heartened when I read about you finding what was thought to have been lost, hanging by a thread, almost gone, but still there for you to place on your ear going forward. Whatever it meant to you, I experienced your story as another encounter with Mystery
“But Mystery does not require action; Mystery requires our attention. Mystery requires that we listen and become open. When we meet with the unknown in this way, we can be touched by a wisdom that can transform our lives.
“Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen Mystery comfort people when nothing else can comfort them and offer hope when nothing else offers hope. I have seen Mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable. For years I have watched people in their confrontation with the unknown recover awe, wonder, joy, and aliveness. They have remembered that life is holy, and they have reminded me as well. In losing our sense of Mystery, we have become a nation of burned-out people. People who wonder do not burn out. . . .
Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.” R.N Remen
Those you really loved never leave you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2pxEIKeQs0&ab_channel=tiberiuswoodyboyd
Sometimes they are more distant, other times right beside you; but they are never really gone.
I threw my university graduation ring away in a snowball fight once. Rented a metal detector and searched high and low to no avail. Found lots of interesting stuff but not my ring.
I assumed it was gone for good until the snow melted about 2 weeks later and there it was…lodged against the side of a building in one of the places I didn’t use the metal detector. I’ve marked that down to one of those answered prayers.
‘Mystery requires that we listen and become open.’
The Holy Spirit. It’s all around us, the great mystery.
And yes, it does concern itself with ‘trivialities’. Lost cats, lost earrings…
While shopping last December on a bitterly cold day I lost what I call my Trinity ring. It’s three intertwined bands of plain Sterling, and I call it my Trinity ring because its three bands represent how God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost form Their Holy Trinity – three rings form one ring, just as God is indivisibly One in Three Persons.
Went for weeks without that lost ring, but couldn’t bear to be without its reminder of the Holy Trinity, so a few days ago I bought an identical replacement in a smaller size so that the new ring will not slip away as easily as its predecessor had.
We had a farm with horses and a muck heap far from the barn. My mother lost a beautiful braided gold bracelet one autumn day. The bracelet turned up three years later one spring when I was digging deep in the muck heap for old manure to use in the garden. I saw a sparkle at the end of the pitchfork and there it was in perfect condition. A message to never give up hope!
My very sweet dad, aged 87, had to take off his wedding ring before heart surgery. After the surgery, it was nowhere to be found. He pestered the hospital with phone calls for days, suggesting that they had misplaced it, and a kind patient relations rep eventually offered to pay him what he thought it was worth. He said $500, and a check arrived for that amount. Shortly thereafter my dad passed away, and as my mom was going through his things, she discovered the wedding ring in a rosary case he had taken with him to the hospital. The timing of the discovery was a huge comfort to my mom, who put it on a chain to wear around her neck.
Years ago I went cross-country skiing with a friend. We skied about halfway around a several-mile loop, when he noticed that his expensive Rolex watch was gone from his wrist.
So we decided to retrace our steps, but holding little hope of finding it. When we returned to our starting point, he was despairing of finding it ever again, when I happened to look down and saw it looped around one of his skis!!
Needless to say I had a little fun with the situation, finally suggesting that most normal people wear their watch on their wrist, not on their ski!
As near as we can figure out, it must have fallen off his wrist on the way out, and he literally skied through it on the trail, while returning to look for it! The watch was fine.
Neo stay in the Land of the Living as long as you can, it’s worth it.
Ray Van Dune:
That outdoes my earring story. Impressive.
I have a few lost-and-found stories myself, along the same lines as many of the above, but here’s the return of a REALLY lost lost ring.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/09/volunteer-finds-1600-year-old-artifact-in-the-city-of-david/
“1,600-year-old pure gold bead unearthed at Jerusalem archaeological site”
It’s a pretty little thing, and apparently a very, very rare find.
I love your blog, and I read it regularly. I’ve often lamented my cowardice in not writing openly about my political transformation, but the penalties in my profession are harsh for openly conservative thinkers.
To my surprise, I saw that our favorite earrings are quite similar. It’s almost my “uniform” when I go out in the world.
One of my worst “lost and found” stories involves the removal of a steering column in my car by a locksmith on the 4th of July with three young kids clamoring for the beach. I thought the keys had been placed on a car top next to mine at a McDonalds parking lot (gone when I returned from getting fries and burgers). After this whole ordeal, I discovered them in the bottom of my purse.
My “kids” are in their late 40s now, and still tell me to look in my purse when I panic over lost keys.
Betsy Lynch:
Well do I know that mischievous keys hide in nooks and crannies of obliging purses.
Glad you enjoyed my “watch on a ski” story, neo. The friend I referenced in the story has unfortunately fallen out of my life, due to long-distance home moves, and even worse, a nasty business dispute between our spouses! But I’ll bet he often recalls the watch incident, in addition to another one…
He and I were golfing on a horribly windy and chilly day, so we were virtually alone on the course. Now he is a very accomplished golfer, while I played once every 5 or 6 years, “whether I needed to or not”. So when he chipped onto the green, it wasn’t too surprising that his shot rolled to within 6 inches of the pin. This was particularly irritating to me since this was the 18th hole, the one we had agreed would determine who bought lunch!
My shot from the rough was horrible, since I shanked it on the lip of the club, launching it on a flat arc sailing across the green, toward the pond on the other side. But amazingly, the ball struck the flag pole full on about halfway up, fell straight down, and rolled into the hole!
I cheerfully asked “That counts, right?!”, to which he replied ruefully “Yep.” It was a tasty lunch as I recall.