Lost and found

Edgar bought me a platinum and 18k gold bracelet when I was in my forties. He paid $11,000 for it. He had a lot of money and bought me nice presents. I lost the bracelet one winter day in New York. The catch never worked well, even after I had it repaired a number of times. My aunt and I spent hours looking for the darn thing, in Central Park (where we had walked), in the shops where we had browsed and back in my apartment. I was frantic. I got over it. It was only a bracelet.

When I was 23, I was standing with a group of journalists overlooking Lake Mead in Nevada. I was in Las Vegas for a meeting and had bought a new jacket to take with me. It was in a brown tweedy fabric with little specks of color. I set the jacket down on a concrete ledge, a wind came along, and off it floated, smack into the lake. I obsessed about the jacket for weeks. I had called the store where I purchased it, but it was out of stock. I got over it. It was only a jacket.

One of my accounts decided to terminate the services of my company a few years ago because we wouldn’t automatically follow an instruction we thought was inappropriate and dumb from a junior employee. I was livid because we did exemplary work. I got over it. It was only an account.

I was a feature writer in 1981 for the New York Daily News and it was my dream job. I was laid off after a year, along with hundreds of other employees, because the paper was in dire financial shape. I was hysterical. I was eight months pregnant with my second child and I was the only breadwinner since my husband stayed home with our two-year-old son.  I got over it. It was only a job.

My father died of melanoma when he was 69. We expected it, but it was a shock when it happened. That’s something you never really “get over,” even if you move on. He wasn’t only a dad. He was MY DAD.

I am a blessed FOF because none of the loss in my life has been devastating, even if it felt that way at the moment. But loss takes lots of different forms and we each deal with it in our own way. I count myself lucky that I’ve “found” what matters most: My family, my health, my friends, my humor, and my perspective.