Nobody prepares you for this kind of thing

[dampscribbler]

My four year old asked me on the way to school this morning if I've ever lost anything that was important to me. 

Comments

[robertainnc.livejournal.com]

One does wonder what prompted the question...there's a beautiful Elizabeth Bishop poem I read years ago that often comes back to me whenever I get too overly focused on loss.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212

One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for that, Bert. I'm gonna put it on the wall above my monitor.