Have you ever lost something? An object, I mean – something perhaps that you cherish? I not so long ago lost a book. It was a wonderful book, entitled “Sing Them Home,” by Stephanie Kallos.
I loved this novel; the story still reverberates in my mind. Wonderfully written, it is a story of death and dying that takes place within a family in Nebraska. Big sky country (or is that Wyoming?) The author portrayed a small town in the Mid-West with such poignancy that I felt at times as though I was in the middle of Mayberry in the fifties, until I was brought out of that reverie by the language of our times.
It was a book that I loved – the poetry of it, the meaning of the words strung together as though on a clothesline, just hanging there for you to take down and fold, neatly placing them in your basket for future reference. One of those books that stays with you for days after while you try to process everything that went on in it.
It was a book that I wanted to share with someone, to let him or her feel the joy of it, of the words spread across the page, the characters so thoughtfully conjured up, each one adding a flavor, a texture, another layer to the story. I wanted to read it again but I couldn’t find it. It was lost. All those words gone from here now, I so wanted to read them again. I know I could have gone and bought a new copy of the book but it would have felt as though I were cheating; it would have felt wrong, for some reason, to do that.
So I sent out emails; I asked friends probably more often than I should have if they had my book. To no avail – it was gone. The death of a book: I wonder if perhaps whoever may have had it loved it as much as I did and so could not let it go. I really am not sure where it went.
It’s funny too because in the novel the mother disappears during a tornado, leaving her family to deal with the aftermath and the unknown as her body is never found. I wonder if my book has been swept up by some kind of word tornado, forever lost in the windswept world of literature.
As in the novel storms have passed through my heart and words have healed and helped. Friends and loved ones have always been there to soothe my soul when dark clouds circled and it seemed the light of day would never be seen again.
Home: that is the place where strong arms of love encircle you and hold you while the winds of life shift outside. Home is where there is stability and comfort. Like my book that was lost, a book I thought was gone forever, it somehow made its way home. I am grateful for that and although it is just a book it seems to me it is a sign that all things come home. Everything always comes back to the place where souls can heal, where bodies rejuvenate, where minds relax and slow down.
When we lose something I guess in a way it is never really gone. It’s always with us. The book I so frantically tried to locate found its way back to me somehow and what a surprise that was. It gave me hope. I know it’s kind of odd I would say that about a silly book. Yet it did: it gave me hope that even when you lose something or someone it will somehow find its way home because in the end isn’t it true that home is where the heart is?
Image Credit
“just sitting there” by ace_eca41. Creative Commons Flickr. Some rights reserved.
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