Rebecca
Hey Nat.

Natalie
Hey Bec.

Rebecca
Had some nice ‘t’ on that ‘Nat,’ didn’t I? “Hey Nat.”

Natalie
Enunciate.

Rebecca
I like to say your name, Nat. Actually, did you know that our great grandmother’s name was Natalie?

Natalie
No, I did not. On what side?

Rebecca
I asked aunt Elaine. She had a sad life, and apparently she ended up in a mental institution.

Natalie
Oh, that great grandma?

Rebecca
That great grandma, and her name was Natalie.

Natalie
Hmm. I mean, if we are going to carry the weight of some of our names, that’s a big name to carry.

Rebecca
That’s a big name. I think there was something so sad about that. Aunt Elaine was telling me that she should have received…

Natalie
Care. Lots and lots of care.

Rebecca
The story was that she might have been going through menopause, and took her clothes off and ran out into the street.

Natalie
Ok — and fair enough. I mean, you get hot!

Rebecca
You’re hot! But I didn’t know her name was Natalie. When I’m getting all cozy with you, I go, “Natalie, Natalie” and I don’t pronounce that ‘t’ at all.

Natalie
True.

Rebecca
Natalie, as opposed to Nat. Things are formal.

Natalie
Is it formal to you? Nat? I think most people think of it as kind of a nickname.

Rebecca
Yeah, well, they don’t know what’s inside my brain.

Natalie
Ok Bec, I have a thing I have to read you. I’m feeling it, and I’m feeling like I just need to let it all out. So here we go, I’m going to do it.

Rebecca
You wrote something?

Natalie
I wrote a thing. I wrote a thing about loss.

Rebecca
Oh yeah, we all wrote something.

Natalie
Yeah, but I really need to share this. So here we go. I’ve written this: “So Nat’s” — I wrote myself down as ‘Nat’ — “Nat’s thought on loss.

“I am good at titles. My mind seems to have an innate ability to sum ideas up with a tight phrase that, in my mind anyways, provokes thought. In grade 11, I titled an essay for my Anth Psych social class ‘Reality Bytes,’ bites with a ‘y,’ as I had completed a survey on internet dating at the Sherway Gardens food court. My teacher was so impressed with my paper title, not even necessarily the contents of my paper, that he put it on his wall of fame, and it stayed there, I was told, long after I graduated. I’ve recently learned that I’ve passed this talent on to my seven-year-old. When I made an especially good muffin the other morning, he said to me with a wink, ‘Mama, you bake my day! That should be the name of your shop,’ and then walked off chomping on his baked good.

“So when asked to consider something difficult, like the word ‘loss,’ my mind naturally went to titles. How to sum up such a term with all of its weight? I’ve lost much in my adult life. A marriage, friendships connected to that relationship, grandparents, positions of influence, health, the contents of a great shoe collection, mentors. But these days, I don’t really want to spend a lot of time stewing in those losses, and I recognize that they all have brought me to where I am now: living a full life with lots to be grateful for. So the title I’ve come up with for this little thought wasp here is ‘Loss and Found,’ because there has much been lost, but just as important to my life story there has also a lot been found along the way.”

So I wrote that piece, but Becca, I was crying while I was writing it.

Rebecca
Aww.

Natalie
I know. I think what has provoked some thought on loss for me is actually Frankie, because he doesn’t want me to kiss him anymore. He actually is totally ok with me hugging him, but he’s said quite specifically, “Mommy, I’m not a kiss guy,” and gets really thrown by my kisses — which is very difficult, because he’s my little baby, and he’s shifting away from me. Even though I know that that’s inherently healthy, I didn’t think it would happen so early, because he’s seven, and I don’t know how to reframe this very specific loss. I’m really feeling it, Bec.

Rebecca
Oh yeah. So much.

Natalie
I know it’s a lot. It’s a lot. But you’re the mom of a teen, so I figured you could handle it. There’s a lot happening in this.

Rebecca
Ok, for starters, ‘Loss and Found,’ that’s so lovely. You do have this damn skill with your titles. I don’t know how you do it. I’m the one who needs to come up with titles all the time, and they’re just always so bad.

Natalie
No, they’re not bad.

Rebecca
They are, Nat. It’s ok. I’ve accepted it. You really do — that’s the perfect piece. You and titles — ‘Loss and Found’ and ‘you bake my day.’ Frankie?

Natalie
I know, Frankie did that! So I’m doing something right, right?

Rebecca
Oh my gosh, you are. You’re doing so much that’s right. It’s such a hard one, not wanting kisses. It’s funny because I’m experiencing the same thing with Elsie right now. Kisses — of course, that’s done, but even hugs lately. The other day, she decided to tell me about consent when I went in for a hug.

Natalie
Which is really good and wise.

Rebecca
It’s good and wise, but it hurt my feelings a lot. Like I’ve said before, it makes me want to have another baby, just to start again so that I can always have someone who will hug me.

Natalie
But I think what we’re both acknowledging here is that that will also pass away.

Rebecca
I could prolong it for a while, but that is definitely painful. I’m not sure we can reframe it, exactly. I know we can reframe everything.

Natalie
This one I’m finding hard to reframe. I can immediately say it’s good that he’s differentiating himself from me. That’s a good, important thing for a kid to be able to do.

Rebecca
Yeah, like in your head, you can go, “This is exactly what needs to happen,” but still it hurts the heart. Loss, it’s a funny word, isn’t it? I tried to do word association with our family around the word ‘loss.’

Natalie
That’s right. I was there, I remember.

Rebecca
When we were even throwing out this notion of loss, and if we would want to talk about it. Didn’t I say it and Clifford immediately was like, “Nope.”

Natalie
Oh yeah.

Rebecca
I think he was a little bit offended that I was trying to have this deep talk, although I wasn’t necessarily trying to have a deep talk — I just thought we could all do some nice brainstorming. But his brain is quite…

Natalie
He goes deep really quickly.

Rebecca
He goes deep, so I think he assumed I meant we should all speak about our great painful losses.

Natalie
Yeah, and I think it did hit close to him because he’s obviously away from his family. It’s been two years since he’s even been able to see anybody from England because of COVID, so probably that’s more front and center as we’re all sitting there at mom and dad’s, able to chit-chat. We wouldn’t go the same direction with the word.

Rebecca
But that word was obviously…

Natalie
Loaded for him. Yeah.

Rebecca
Elsie mentioned the loss of her dance costumes. Do you remember that?

Natalie
Oh yeah, I remember that. That was so interesting to me.

Rebecca
Which was interesting because she had decided to cut up her dance costume so she could make them into a Halloween costume — which I thought was excellent, the reusing. But then Simon was able to articulate with her — he was able to understand what was happening, because then she started to cry about it, and I think that all those costumes have memories for her. They are, I think, symbolic of childhood for her. I do think when you’re a tween / teen and getting older, that maybe there’s something extra-comforting about your childhood memories. It’s interesting because you have the loss about Frankie, but she has her own sense of loss about growing up.

Natalie
Yeah, totally.

Rebecca
You just have to ignore — my cat is meowing, but we have to keep her out there.

Natalie
Oh, we do? Ok, so I’m not letting her in. Speaking of cats, wasn’t that what Violet mentioned as a loss? Tofino?

Rebecca
Yes. Tofino, our cat that died.

Natalie
That’s right. So that was interesting that that was the first thing that came to mind for her, for loss.

Rebecca
Yeah, I think that was actually one of her first big losses — maybe her first big loss in life. This is something I wanted to get to, but I just think it’s interesting how we start off with a lot of gains — would you say it that way? Life feels like we’re gaining. So as a kid, we get to go to high school, we get to… whatever. When we were growing up, getting married.

Natalie
Yeah. Gaining of experiences, right?

Rebecca
Gaining of experiences, yeah. And then all of a sudden, you hit a certain point, and then it starts to feel…

Natalie
Like the losses start piling up.

Rebecca
Yeah.

Natalie
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

Rebecca
Actually for me — can you handle if I tell you this, Nat?

Natalie
Yes.

Rebecca
I think that one of my first big losses was your divorce, weirdly.

Natalie
Are you going to cry?

Rebecca
I’m not remotely going to cry, because I detached from it completely now — at the time, I remember thinking my world was falling apart, which is really unfair, because your world was falling apart in its own way. But I decided to make it about me, and I felt like this cute couple-y foursome that we were was dissolving, and my life was never going to be happy again.

Natalie
Oh, I’m sorry that you had to live that, Bec.

Rebecca
It’s ok, I forgive you.

Natalie
I mean, I’m teasing you, but I actually can understand that, because loss is weird, right? When we lose our loved ones, I think that those losses take on so many different forms. They must be weighty in relation to the feelings of others. That certainly was my experience of that whole breakup. I think that perhaps even my loss weighed heavier because of knowing that you lost in that, too.

Rebecca
And you’ve always been such a caregiver for me. So that would have…

Natalie
Well, probably held off the process, if I’m completely honest.

Rebecca
Since we’re getting honest.

Natalie
Since we’re getting clear.

Rebecca
“I stayed an extra year.”

Natalie
Oh, Bec. But I felt like I really did experience the weightiness of that goodbye because of a circle of care that surrounded me — which was wider at that time. I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve tightened the net just a little bit in terms of what I have time forward and space for in terms of my actual day-to-day, but at the time there were lots of friends who were affected. I remember (it sounds so horrible to describe this) that when he and I walked through our house and decided who would get what art piece, we literally just went from room to room going, “Ok, that’s mine. Well, that’ll be yours. Well, that makes sense for you.” And it was so clinical. There were no tears, and maybe by that point we were both just so tired. I have no idea, really. But it’s an interesting memory of a very calm and considered goodbye. I don’t know that other people would understand that, or have even experienced watching that. It would actually make for a really interesting movie scene, to be honest, because I can’t imagine that anybody watching the scene from the outside looking in wouldn’t imagine that it would be really sad. The word sad would come to mind. Whereas I think by that point, the loss was… I mean, we can get to the other side of loss, right? We can. Maybe that’s where we both were at that point, and we were waiting for everybody to catch up. Maybe that’s what that was about.

Rebecca
I do think that is obviously a beautiful thing about the human spirit, that we can recover from things and get to the other side, as you say. I think my second big loss was grandma’s dying. Because I remember I used to think it was so special that I could be one of the kids who would say, “Oh yeah, my grandparents are alive.” Do you remember thinking that?

Natalie
No, that’s interesting.

Rebecca
That it was kind of a special thing to have grandparents that were alive.

Natalie
And so present.

Rebecca
Yeah, but knowing that at some point I wouldn’t be able to say that. And then you become the person who says, “Oh, my grandparents have passed away.”

Natalie
Hmm. Now are you going to cry? Because I could cry.

Rebecca
No, I’m not going to cry.

Natalie
No, but I could!

Rebecca
Do you need to cry?

Natalie
I might cry.

Rebecca
You just cry if you need to, Nat.

Natalie
Thanks, Bec. I can picture when I used to be at grandma and grandpa’s house and I would do her nails. She was so little, she was little like you. So she would sit on this chair that was much too big for her, and she’d have her foot resting on my shoulder and I would clip her nails from up here. So it was like her foot was next to my face. I could totally tear up right now. But I also remember in the hospital in the last couple days, I was with her a lot and it was a crazy time of loss because I realized how I respond at some level to loss. You know what, I’m just making a connection right now. I think when I respond to loss, I think I get a bit clinical and it must be a way of putting…

Rebecca
Like coping?

Natalie
Coping mechanism kind of thing, because when I remember her expressing fear — she was so close to the end, and it’s like her body knew it — and I got really hard and I was like, “Nope, you’re going to be fine.” It was very clinical, like I’m straightening her blanket. I don’t know if I gave her what she needed in that moment. I’m going to be gentle with myself and say that I did.

Rebecca
Or you did what you could in that moment.

Natalie
But it’s interesting that the clinical ‘doing’ part of me definitely reared its head. I think I am good in a crisis in terms of getting shit done. I don’t know if I’m really good at feeling it through. So that’s interesting with loss. You know, I’ve never named that.

Rebecca
Don’t we have a family friend who, when a really uncomfortable or scary situation happens, she laughs?

Natalie
Yeah, that’s right. That’s one I don’t wish upon myself.

Rebecca
But it’s kind of, I think, an extension of that idea of a coping mechanism. Shying away from the feeling part, going into the coping part. It’s interesting, because some losses are just so big. I think you introduced me to the Instagram account Humans of New York. Was it you? I think so.

Natalie
Well, I know I follow it. So I think we talked about it.

Rebecca
I don’t know if others look at that account, but the stories on there tend to be so crazy and so big. They tend to be about some kind of loss, do you not think?

Natalie
Yeah, I totally agree. Of everyday loss, that’s what’s so wild about it. It’s just loss in all of these random people in that massive city.

Rebecca
When you say ‘everyday loss,’ do you just mean really regular people?

Natalie
Really regular people, yeah.

Rebecca
Because the stories seem very large.

Natalie
They seem very large, absolutely. But I swear, the whole point of that website was that he just started interviewing people on the street. “Can I take your picture?” and then people wanted to tell a little story to go with the picture.

Rebecca
Oh, he didn’t even necessarily know he was going to encounter these stories.

Natalie
No, and people just wanted to share. People wanted to tell their story. Anyways, yeah, big losses.

Rebecca
Yeah. It made me wonder, though. I wonder if our listeners would ever feel like, for example, your leg story — would they be thinking that’s a crazy story of loss? I don’t even know what the point of asking the question is. Same thing with Violet’s heart situation. Sometimes I do think about that — I’m like, “Could I please meet another person who’s had a child go through a heart…” I know I could join a support group, that’s obviously one of the points of support groups, to meet people who’ve experienced what you’ve experienced — because you’ve had different losses, but they’re not the same losses as my losses. Sometimes is the healing that can be found by identifying with the exact loss? Sometimes I think, “Is there anybody else out there that I know that has experienced this particular heart trauma-grief?” But yet a neighbour up the street is experiencing something else that’s hard, but why do I want that particular solidarity?

Natalie
Well, you hit on the word ‘solidarity’ there, but I haven’t. This just happened, so you won’t know this. I had an interesting conversation with someone at my school — super lovely human, very thoughtful, and I was sharing randomly about my compression socks and what had happened, and she started talking about her experience with essentially the same thing. A blood clot. What was hilarious, Rebecca, is she actually presented at the same conference I presented at, she discovered this blood clot in New York. She’s been in the places I’ve been. It was the same conference I delivered a paper at. Anyways, they caught it, so she’s the example of the person who had — my issues are because they didn’t catch it. She is what I would look like — there is some ongoing necessary care for her, on some level.

Rebecca
So she wears compression stockings too?

Natalie
No, not quite the same way, but she would if she was on a plane — like that kind of thing. But she has to be careful and conscious and is very aware of blood clots, just like I would be — in terms of medicine that she takes and whatever. It’s just so wild to see somebody — the story that would have been mine had the medical system caught mine. So it was like the opposite, weirdly, of solidarity. It was like understanding, but to a point, because then it was like, here’s this path that she took versus the one that I took based on what healthcare had provided us. That was interesting, because I’m not sure that meeting somebody who was so close to my story helped me.

Rebecca
Because then you start to compare really closely. Is it worse, is it slightly better?

Natalie
Yeah, and I don’t like where I go in my head when I go there. So that was interesting to note on myself. We have this friend who’s just recently lost her nephew. I mean, he was only 20. It’s just a really really horrible sad story of a car accident — and just so fast. I just feel like all of a sudden, in the face of that story, if I go down the road of comparison, my leg feels very little — versus the insurmountable nature of that type of loss. But then there are days where the neverendingness of my leg pain feels downright insurmountable — and yet I’ve made it this far, so obviously it isn’t. I can get to the other side of some semblance of loss, but it is exhausting.

There’s loss, and then there’s trying to explain that loss (or even just people’s reactions to it) to onlookers. I wore heels this past Sunday to church, and I did it on purpose, for myself. I wore a pair of boots that I found at the back of the closet that I put on, on purpose, knowing that I had bought them because they had a high tight ankle, which should technically support my ankle. But I don’t actually need to explain that to anybody, because it’s my damn foot. I put it on, I was wanting to test out wearing these heels to see if I could do a day at school in them.

Rebecca
And what would happen to your leg?

Natalie
Yeah, just after two hours in them. Then immediately when I wore them, people wanted to ask questions about them because they know my story. They’re asking out of love and out of care — “Oh, how are you doing?” But immediately my loss is right there front and center and I’m trying to explain myself to people. So then it just makes me feel, as Frankie would say, ‘grumpity.’ It’s a really weird, fatiguing, perhaps micro-version of what lots of people feel at a macro level with those larger stories of loss — like the HONI stories, or our friend’s recent loss.

Rebecca
HONI is Humans of New York?

Natalie
Those Humans of New York ones, yeah. I don’t know that that helped anything in terms of discussion, but definitely not loss that goes away.

Rebecca
Yeah. Do you remember once at church, someone was asking mom how Violet’s heart appointment had gone, and maybe I overheard it and I just jumped on it. I was so angry. I think I turned to anger a little bit, angry at the question. I just wanted to be left alone or something. I don’t want my grief, my loss on the table. Is there something humiliating about loss sometimes?

Natalie
I don’t know. That’s a good word to go to. Definitely there is some word out there that I could, if I sat with that one for a second… for me, I’m not sure it’s humiliating.

Rebecca
Well, I think it stems from my perfectionism or something like that. Loss can equal my life is visibly imperfect. I don’t know. Or something.

Natalie
Oh, interesting. I think I go to fatigue. I hear that. There’s a big word attached to it, so I get that.

Rebecca
Yeah. Although some things have been returned to us.

Natalie
Yes, and that is a very necessary way of reframe.

Rebecca
Which I like to think about too, because I do want to share with everyone that I got my computer data back.

Natalie
That’s amazing.

Rebecca
Yeah.

Natalie
Seemed like such a doomed loss.

Rebecca
It seemed impossible. I’ll just be grateful that it’s back. Now I have a big responsibility to that novel.

Natalie
The one you lost.

Rebecca
It shall be written, because it must.

Natalie
Because it’s come back.

Rebecca
But can you think of anything that’s been returned to you? As we age and we think of all of our losses that are piling up, until we get to the grave. I’m thinking of my bookshelf right here, that is one of those bookshelves where all the books look like they’re toppling. How would you describe that? It’s an art piece. You could think of all of our losses piling up like that. But then some things are unexpectedly returned to us. I have to think about that one, because all that’s coming to me is my computer data, but I think there must be more, and I feel like this maybe something we should probe even in our lives and maybe return to at some point. Do a part two.

Natalie
I can think of one. I recently read a novel again, and I feel like my love of novels has been returned to me, like I had for a long time left them behind.

Rebecca
Yeah, and I’ve been a bit sad, because I feel like you’re such a reader and I wanted you to find the comfort in novels that I do — and the excitement.

Natalie
Yeah, because I read other kinds of things these days. I’ve been reading that for a long time since my degree. I had to read a bunch of novels, but there was one specific novel that I read — Cereus Blooms at Night, by Shani Mootoo. I read that piece on the recommendation of a friend, but also just for a group of my students. There was just something about the reading of that novel that really triggered some things, and then I immediately asked to borrow one of your Rachel Cusk books off your shelf, and you were very generous.

Rebecca
And you’re already loving it.

Natalie
And I’m already loving it.

Rebecca
It hurt me to lend it.

Natalie
But you did it because you’re trying to feed this part of my soul, so I appreciate that. Anyways, that’s been returned, but I don’t know that my list will get that long because the idea of getting things back is maybe not my jam. I think I’m more drawn to moving forward.

Rebecca
Interesting.

Natalie
Yeah. You know, even when people have talked about COVID, going “When we can get back to normal,” (and there have been lots of people who have troubled that kind of phrase and said, “Really, was normal that great before for lots of people and lots of circumstances?”) I’ve resonated with that question of, “Do we want to go back to normal?” when I really do see much of the world as needing to change.

But I also just think I’ve lived. Like moving house and wanting so badly to be here — you know, two streets away from you — that I sold my house down by the lake and moved up to The Junction, but had to wait for the place that I bought to be ready, and so I’d moved home with mom and dad for five months. They were so generous, let me stay, but basically that meant that everything had to be packed up. So my house was in a pod for five, six months and that was such a freeing time because I didn’t actually experience much in the way of loss, even though all my stuff was lost to me — it was supposedly out there in this field of pods that those things exist in when people move. That’s what I describe them as, like a field of pods. You’d never find yours, it’s all numbered and whatever. I remember looking back on that time and feeling so unshackled. I was just like, “I could go anywhere.”

Rebecca
“I don’t have any shit to carry around.”

Natalie
Oh my gosh, yeah, there was nothing to carry. I also didn’t have the weight of all the memories attached to those things. Which maybe at that time was especially important to me, because I was still pretty fresh in terms of moving out of that life.

Rebecca
Right, and you had even said to me when I lost my data, “Maybe there’s something hugely freeing about letting something go,” like being done with that. So when you got all your stuff back, did you feel heavy again?

Natalie
I don’t know that I felt heavy, but there were definitely some memories attached to some of those things — that I was like, “I don’t know that I need to hold that memory so securely in place anymore. I think I can move on from that memory.” There are definitely things that came with me from that house that never made it into where we are now. Some things just did go.

Rebecca
Yeah, knowing you, you probably just would have put them out on the street. This, this, this, and this, that I might have enjoyed.

Natalie
Share with you.

Rebecca
You’re like, “It has to go. Right now.”

Natalie
Yes. Quick and dirty toss-out. But it’s a lot of moving on through the letting go of things. I think that’s been something I’ve done.

Rebecca
The letting go of things is interesting because I do think there’s a fine line between holding on for memories and becoming a hoarder. Sometimes I feel like I’m a hoarder of kid’s art. Because I’m like, “I want all these memories. I want every memory. I want that scrap of paper that Violet wrote, ‘Mommy, I cleaned your desk.’” This is a new desk — she just cleaned my desk. Am I going to keep every scrap of paper? I’m looking around at my desk as I say this, but there’s so many of them, and some of them are just kind of ridiculous. But I want all of them.

Natalie
Well, it’s funny — with Frankie’s art, that’s the one thing that I’ve had trouble letting go of. I’ve kept a lot of stuff.

Rebecca
That’s the smallest hoarder tendency in you?

Natalie
It’s in there. The other day I did — I put something in the recycling that I knew he wasn’t really going to pay attention to.

Rebecca
Did you pull it back out?

Natalie
No, I didn’t pull it back out. I totally let that one go. But I also recognize that I need to go buy from the art store one more of those big envelopes so I can put more of the stuff that’s coming home. They’re so creative, these little guys, so I want to document them.

Rebecca
You know what, it really does diminish as they get older. You just get less and less art. I mean, obviously, but I’m like, “What do I have of Elsie’s now?” Since she’s not painting, sadly.

Natalie
But she does at the farm.

Rebecca
A little.

Natalie
We’ll put something in front of her. I’ll bring a canvas next time.

Rebecca
For your mother. Our poor cat!

Natalie
I know.

Rebecca
Do you want to let her in?

Natalie
You really don’t think it’s ok for me to open the door? People, can you all handle it if I just open the door for one sec? Come here, Coco. Yeah. There we go.

Rebecca
I do want to say I do recognize, for all of my looking back more than you do, I do recognize the way — oh see, now she needs to scratch, and that’s another annoyance.

Natalie
It’s just a second. It’s all right.

Rebecca
Coco, just settle. She won’t settle — is that I do recognize the growth that can happen through pain and loss.

Natalie
Yes.

Rebecca
So I am able to recognize and see that we grow, and can grow in our empathy, when we lose things.

Natalie
Yeah, 100%. I think that so much empathy is built in my experience of having lived through stuff. I would also say that it’s been built in being really present with myself in the midst of not just the loss, but in the recovery time. There’s something about the empathy of past sadness, but also the empathy that comes from just sitting in either letting people care for me, or caring for others — being utterly, utterly present. Which brings me to you having talked to me about needing to meditate, right? Truly, if that’s what meditation is about, it’s about empathizing with the self — being fully centered. I think that that is something that for me, I’ve associated past losses with — being able to resonate with somebody else’s experience in a big way.

Rebecca
Now you can, because now you see them different?

Natalie
I think I do.

Rebecca
Well, in loss, we find each other, right?

Natalie
Yeah. I think so.

Rebecca
We find solidarity in shared pain. We’re kind of circular now, right?

Natalie
Well, when I think back to the Frankie thing that I shared with you off the top, I feel like even just having sat down for this discussion and feeling a moment where I’m sharing with you about that feeling — because I know you’ve experienced that pain of your kid drawing away from you — I feel really heard. Because I feel heard, therefore you’re listening and being present with me. There’s that circular thing you’re talking about, right? It’s so necessary to building up empathy through loss. I don’t think that I could spend time sitting with a seven-year-old and expect them necessarily to be able to empathize with all my layers of loss, because as we started talking at the beginning about, they don’t have the experiences yet — or at least we certainly hope they don’t. There are lots of little kids out there in the world who have experienced great losses early on, but my hope is that that doesn’t come on until a little later. I want to sit with somebody who’s experienced a little loss — to get me. That’s you. That’s those friends we have fostered over time.

Rebecca
Books.

Natalie
Books, yeah.

Rebecca
Yeah. I think that’s well-said. You had a little poem for us. Did you?

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
I like it when we go searching for poems. And then I have something to read.

Natalie
Oh, really?

Rebecca
Not even something. A couple things.

Natalie
I saw this week — Etel Adnan, she’s a Lebanese artist and poet who just died this week. She died at 96, so this is somebody who lived a good long life, but experienced a lot of loss in that lifetime. A poem that was translated that I just think is so beautiful is: “There are moments when the past ceases to be a form of the present. Rain and tears look alike.” “There are moments when the past ceases to be a form of the present. Rain and tears look alike.” I was just really struck by that, it summing up loss at so many levels — for me anyways. If rain and tears look alike, then our world is just filled with so much loss. The whole ‘loss and found’ idea — we can find care and love for each other not just in our words shared and in memories talked about and being present, but also just in the nature of…

Rebecca
Just standing outside.

Natalie
Yeah. Nature. It’s in the nature. There’s something in that, which I loved. So that’s my little quote as I try and reframe Frankie’s no longer wanting my kisses.

Rebecca
Ok, and then this is what I offer you, the little thing I wrote on loss — and then I have one from mom. She won’t come on the podcast, but she said she would write something — and in fact, she said, “Not the podcast, right?” I don’t know if this can help reframe Frankie’s no longer… I’m going to try to kiss him, actually, just to see!

Natalie
No, your daughter just talked about consent! It will be the same hitting.

Rebecca
I’m kidding — sort of. Ok, mine is called, “Loss: A List.”

“My daughter tells me about consent, which she does not give me when I go to hug her. At the end of the summer, the peppers shrivel. The watermelons I didn’t get to collecting are emptied by animals. I was distracted when my grandmother was dying. I think about her a lot because we have the same shaped face and hands. I see her hands in my own aging hands. My father-in-law carved me a heart out of a piano key and I dropped it down my shirt and I couldn’t find it for four hours. My first wedding ring slipped off the windowsill in our apartment and found a crack in the floor, falling, falling, falling to its new inaccessible home.

“‘Write like it’s the end of the world,’ one writer says, ‘Because it is.’ He says we can only make a future from the depth of truth we face now. From the depth of the loss.”

That’s mine.

Natalie
Beautiful.

Rebecca
Reframing, I want to see your brain working. Click, click, click. And here’s mom’s. Her background in literature comes out. Ok. She writes,

“Loss, a melancholy topic for a melancholy season of COVID disruption and angst. The pandemic has brought to the forefront what we valiantly try to hold at bay: our reluctant awareness of the human condition we cannot escape. We see loss all around us, and we feel it inside us. There are little losses that only hurt a little. I have a small box in a drawer containing a variety of single earrings. I vainly hope that their twin will eventually show up.

“Other losses have more consequence: land, resources, investments, jobs. I’m surprised each day by the sense of loss that accompanied my retirement coinciding with the first lock downs of the pandemic. But then there are losses that are overwhelming, and the pain never quite goes away. Loss of freedom, of identity, of relationships, and of course the final loss, death of those we love. I can still recall viscerally the terror I felt when my dad phoned me — at the time a young wife and mother…”

Now I’m going to cry, so you keep reading from there. “From a long distance to say two simple words…”

Natalie
“She’s gone. With my mother’s death, many things changed for me.

“In the opening lines of his epic Paradise Lost, the great 17th century poet John Milton writes that death and all of our woes follow the loss of Eden. Near the climax of his poem, he laments Eve’s decision to eat the forbidden fruit as he watches her move towards her downfall, despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss. That is loss at its depth, setting the stage for all future losses. As the 20th century poet Robert Frost writes in his sonnet The Oven Bird, the question that he, the bird, frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing. And Stanley Kunitz takes it further: ‘How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?’

“As I muse on their two questions I realize that the books I love the most, contain a record of devastating loss. Take Toni Morrison’s Beloved, for instance. Who of us can fathom the loss Baby Suggs, Sethe, and Paul D absorbed in their torturous memories of slavery — what was done to them, and what they did in their despair? From classical literature, I’m drawn to King Priam humbly in treating Achilles to release Hector’s body from the spoils of war, and Queen Dido of Carthage losing her kingdom over her love for duty-bound Aeneas, who abandons her in the end. And of course, dear King Lear, who decides to give in to being old, giving up his kingdom prematurely and then losing the daughter he loved because of his own error in judgment.

“Why do I love these stories? There’s an authenticity, a connection, a resonance with my own emotional framework. Not the details or intensity of these larger-than-life character’s experiences, but the sense of the impact of loss. The story writers, the poets, and the filmmakers, they get it, and they help us to get through it somehow. I watched the lovely film Minari last night, the story of the Korean immigrant family trying to build a new future in Arkansas. At the climax of the story, they encounter a two-fold tragedy — loss, if you please. The rediscovery of their deep love for one another out of the wreckage was delicately consoling. I return to an excerpt of Stanley Kunitz’s poem The Layers: ‘In my darkest night, when the moon was covered, and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: live in the layers, not on the litter.’ What better direction can we receive as we navigate the painful losses that inevitably surprise us?”

Rebecca
“Live in the layers.” So interesting, right? “Not on the litter.”

Natalie
Yeah, so I guess that’s what I need to do with my kisses and Frankie. I need to live in the layers of all of my beautifully nuanced relationship with that very smart little boy.

Rebecca
And that he will surprise you with some other act of devotion that will be greater than the kisses somehow. I don’t know how, but I believe Frankie will. Any kid who says — what was his bake line?

Natalie
Oh my gosh, what was it again? He was like, “You bake my day, mamma.”

Rebecca
You bake my day.

Natalie
I know. I love you, Becca.

Rebecca
I love you. Obviously that’s poignant, listening to mom’s words, because obviously we…

Natalie
Hear her pain.

Rebecca
Well, and we know that, you know, that that will probably be our next big loss.

Natalie
I can’t even go there, but I know what you’re saying.

Rebecca
Yeah. I love you.

Natalie
Grateful for this time. I love you.

Rebecca
Bye.

Natalie
Bye.