The other day, on one-to-two-too-many buses, trains and transits on the relatively short journey from Dublin to Clare, I lost some flimsy little postcards, paper version of the past inscribed with stories of travels from 8 years ago to the present now. They were addressed to my family, as tokens of far away, or at life that was always being re-made.
Petty, I know, a petty little loss that for whatever reason still hurts like a previous one.
I didn’t even take a photo of them, but found a photo of the first postcard. It had on its cover a quote reading ‘Some people walk in the rain others just get wet’ . Hope, I think, or allowing things to simply fall.
I lost them because I was rushing, and though I’ve lived a life of losing my belongings, as some of us are prone, whether through travel or being too far away in our heads, not seeing the present in its fullness. But when we lose a something precious, no matter how inconsequential in the ‘grand scheme of things’, amid the strife that some of us are facing, it seems silly to be sad. And yet sad we are.
Why are we so sentimental? Why is losing always hard?
I had slipped a group of postcards inside the book I was reading - ‘This is Happiness’.
So is happiness to let something go?
Is happiness to lose something?
Is that the lesson here? Perhaps I’ll never know.
After moving four times in the train, I realised upon landing that they had slipped out but, in the hustle and bustle of packing up and the hurry of leaving, thought to myself ‘they’ll show up’, as if they could have edged their way into my backpack unwittingly.
My heart leapt from its socket.
I switched on the light that evening to unpack and realised their absence — the book was empty but still full of words.
Of course these things happen. They happen to all of us, no matter how much we move around, or how steady our lives are.
And as many times we try to tell ourselves that these little meaningless, material glimpses of the past don’t matter, that it’s the memories that count — for whatever reason, it still hurts. It stings. We feel a little less. Those tiny inscriptions, a handwriting changing with the years, form my first solo summer abroad to Amsterdam, or the small green Chiapas mountain town, a harmony of beans and squash and the artwork that hung of the hostel doorway in postcard format, hand drawn doodles and ramblings of the written word,
making their way all the way from heart to hand, across the oceans, continents, other people’s hands, and all the way back to home.
And back again, then, because I was stupid and thought I could keep them safe between the pages of a book. Who knows where now? Does it matter,
Does the material matter more or less than the memory? Does the feeling create the past, or a gap?
So guess it still hurts, it stings. I have forgotten the contents of the long written letters. I guess it’s natural, however fickle and small these losses are, in the grand scheme of things, to hurt, still. Postcards and pens and sacred hats or earrings are nothing in the face of flesh, or bone, or eyes or hearts,
it hurts. The loss of words, and the postcards each personally selected for their colour and light.
I hope that wherever they are they shall sit in my heart on the mantelpiece of some strange future home - as flowers, or futures, or something I thought was gone but can return.
Again and again and again.
I just don’t know where to look just yet, for I am still a little sad.
I remember all the other things I’ve lost, when I lose something - love or friends, beloved pets, family members, hats, crystals, special, insignificant material objects.
‘So I said let grief
be a fallen leaf’ — a wise man once sang.
I have to let go and stop being so sentimental and attached to paper moments, no matter how precious.
Thank you for reading, if you made it this far.
Ailbhe xxxx