It is customary, with last goodbyes, when someone has passed away
to use the words I'm sorry for your loss. That is the right thing to say
but I don't see how or understand
why that's the sentence we use
when people we love pass away are nothing we could ever lose.
We lose keys and glasses and their cases,
we lose bank cards and lose our places
in queues, lose wallets, phones, lose track of time
these are things we're sorry about losing but they can be replaced
and didn't matter all that much,
but people- Ella- is not a pair of shoes
or the sweater you intended to wear,
or whatever it is you swear you saw a minute ago, somewhere.
These things can go and well be fine
despite complaining about banks and the please hold the line
or going to lost property bins, or to find security-
it doesn't work when you say, "I'm sorry you lost a memory."
Because we don't really lose it. Ella has never really gone.
In fact, in more than just memory but in presence, she keeps us going on.
I don't know about any of you but the Ella I know and knew
is nothing lost. She's still with us, giving Nanny a kiss in the backseat,
spilling marbles all around her mother's feet. In the night,
I've heard her talk to me, not even in my sleep, but her voice
at last telling me that, finally, I'm getting things right.
She'll never be lost to any of us at all, so irreplaceable
and I feel I am walking in her shoes
down every UCL hall, and so the sentiment of sorry for your loss
doesn't apply. Ella is someone we miss, not something we will lose.
Flickering in memory,
visiting in dreams, in echoes,
and staying with us. How can anyone
or anything be lost
if it never really goes?
