more about lost by Luanne Armstrong

Lost:

Apparently, one of the natural reactions to the death of a loved one is to feel as if you should go looking for them. I think about this, driving to town for groceries. I think, “I should go see my mom,” and then I think, oh no, I lost her. Where did she go?
What an odd expression for death. We lose our loved ones, they don’t just die, they are lost to us, we can’t find them, they’re not so much dead as wandering in some unknown and unfathomable wilderness and the wilderness itself is lost.
I think about this, wandering the farm. So much is lost, so much is present, so much is being created for the future. It’s always in process.
I walk by the dog graveyard. After I lost my old dog, I had a clear and comforting vision of him running with the other ‘lost dogs’, running and barking at the coyotes, as he used to do, and happy to be out of his crippled body and into one that let him be free. It was comforting because his ghost didn’t hang around, whimpering and scratching at the door, as he did when he began to grow deaf and then blind and then panicky if his head wasn’t right by my foot. Dead, he didn’t seem to need me at all.
When I walk by the chicken shed my father built, I think of my dad and his endless work, and now my father is ‘lost’ too, although his voice stays in my head and his influence still shapes the whole family.
The old paths in the pasture are still faintly there, lost here as well, my childhood, there is the rock where I used to lead Lady, my stubborn barely trained first horse, so I could leap on her back and we could pretend to lead galloping cavalry charges up the hill. Lost now to the new pond and trees is the big rock that was once an elephant I could ride on, or a castle or even a spaceship. Wandering the pasture is always an exercise in nostalgia.
The difficulty with staying in one place for so long is this overlaying of the past and the present; when our dad died and my brother and I began rebuilding the farm, we agreed that it was hard for us to see what could be changed, because of these layers of memory, this sense of what our grandfather and our father had laid down as templates. Although it’s easier for my brother; his giant machines can wipe out years of memories in a few moments but both he and I see things as they were as well as how they are and that can be more than a little confusing sometimes for outsiders.
Walking here, I am always a little bit lost in time. Some days I walk with my mother at my shoulder. Every day, she and I walked to the lake together and home again for tea. Now, I walk with my grandchildren, who will make their own memories in whatever form they want. It is odd for me to think that they will not know my parents, who are still so present for me, and how easily lost are the stories and memories and history even of this place, where I work at maintaining our history, and where every family dinner is an occasion for the same stories to be recounted over and over, each time with a new layer added.
But that’s why I am a writer and that is the gift of this great circular grief and joy of lost and found, lost loved ones, found memories, found stories, levels and layers and the ground of history.