Losing, Losses, Letting Go

I just gave my sofa away.

It was a spur of the moment idea, one of those wild-hair things. Some nice people had come by the house to collect an old bed, a chest of drawers we no longer needed. And I said, hey, how about a sofa?

I should tell my husband. I moved the other furniture around, gave the end tables a little breathing room. Vacuumed the floor and picked up all the ancient change. Corralled the dust bunnies.

He's still gonna notice.

Right after my grandmother's funeral, I gave away a bunch of her dishes to a distant relative. I didn't ask anybody, just pulled them out of the cupboard, wrapped them in newspaper and put them in the backseat of this cousin's car. My family was horrified and bewildered. So was I. I loved those dishes.

So I know I am feeling bereft today. I know that I am trying to jettison something that's hurting me. I keep thinking of this poem that my friend David wrote. It's called "Vanishing Acts." This is the last stanza:

Everything happens for no reason but
what we reduce it to, depending on
our losses at the deeper end and how
we face the vanishing of all we meant
to keep: from flesh and blood to love and more
than love. My students understand the seeds
of conflict necessary for a tale
that's worth the telling, worthy of their time.
What gets them, though, are tales that end without
an end, with only loss, when loss is just the start.

Losing is not the same as letting go. So they tell me. It feels the same from this end, though, in the empty place, so this is not wisdom I can validate.

So much that we cannot hold, so many endings and never agains. Why, then, are we so careless with what we do have? Why do we -- in the name of pride or protection or just desserts -- let good things slip through our fingers?

I don't know why feeling lost makes me want to give things away, things like furniture and plates. I don't know what kind of wound I'm trying to balm. I just know that I'll be sitting on the floor tonight, on fluffy carpet that feels like new. And that's the closest thing to understanding I'll get.