“Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people – they always go away, sooner or later. You can’t hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. If they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.”
—Bruce Coville
Wisdom comes in small doses as life experience accumulates.
One of my earliest realizations of loss came when the incredible woods of my childhood were cleared, the lumber sold and the land turned into tillable acreage for my young parents who were working hard to grow their farm.
My older sisters and I pleaded the case of keeping our favorite place on the farm, but it became clear we weren’t going to win. About that same time, a cherry tree in our side yard, so perfect for climbing, was deemed unstable, quietly dying. It had to go. All these years later, I can still put myself in the deep woods that are long gone; I can feel the thrill of scaling that old cherry tree and being eye-to-eye with the roof of our house.
These past few weeks have been filled with the destruction of the high school building, the one from which my children and I graduated, and the elementary school they both attended. Next to go will be the large brick school building where my father spent all twelve years, played high school basketball and accepted his high school diploma. My first eight years of school were spent there, and my children hold great memories of middle school there. Lots of memories were made there over the generations.
Some have been outspokenly opposed to the removal of these old buildings. The landscape is forever changed, no one will argue that. But there was no option to save the aging buildings, according to state mandate. It would have been harder to see nuisance trespassing and ongoing erosion of the once-proud structures.
It has been many years since I was in the home of my grandparents, almost as many since I’ve been in the home where I was raised. The rooms, the vintage decor, the upstairs porch where we counted shooting stars, the life and scent of those homes will never change. It can be summoned in a moment, familiar and sweet.
The paths my sisters and I blazed through the old woods of our childhood have been gone for decades, but the smooth beech tree will forever be our meeting spot. The shade of the biggest black walnut marks our largest mushroom find, and the mighty oak in the middle helped my sister gain gold medal climbing status, if only in bragging rights, it still counts.
The finest things in life — the land, the people, the homes and barns and buildings, the woods, the first sight of a shooting star — all become more meaningful and valuable as the years go by, whether or not we can ever truly touch them again. In our finest hour, we can revisit anything we choose.
