The Stuff of Loss

So I go to Wegmans [whose eponymous letters of ownership are missing the would-be apostrophe, that impotent and almost-forgotten icon of possession] and in a huff buy stuff for Sunday's supper and the week's lunches, grumbling this chore could have been performed at any one of several days earlier in the preceding week. Fueled by both hunger and anger, I lose focus. I use my debit card. I ask for twenty dollars in cash back, over and above the $30.18 for the groceries. I dutifully pack everything into the Wegmans fabric reusable bag. I get home, unpack in a storm of activity, cook supper in a maelstrom. One lingering problem: one big pebble in the shoe of my evening: where's that twenty-dollar bill? It's not in my pocket. Only the receipt is. Did my cash fall out, mocking my self-righteous indignation and get-things-done pose? I check all my pockets, in my pants, in my pullover San Francisco Giants sweatshirt worn on Willie Mays's birthday. I go back to the car, running my hands along cracks, crevices, corners, cushions, any other C word you want to throw in there. I retrace my steps and search my pockets, fingering the tired lint of obsession. Twice. Thrice. Whatever-the-word-is-for-fourths. I call Wegmans. I drive back there, and leave my name. I retrace my steps again. I check pockets. Again. Everything again. I even mention this to Mom, 90, as if she needs to hear a grown man whine about this. We talk about praying to Saint Anthony. I don't. Or do I? It's a whirr. I am crazed. I look upstairs. I look in places, such as other pants, where the twenty-dollar bill could not possibly be. I grimly tell myself, You cannot find this. Let it go. It will drive you crazy. It's only twenty dollars. I feel accusatory. Who did this to me? On the phone, as I feign breezy self-control, my mother mentions a story of a clerk once shorting her, only to have the clerk ultimately admit to the error. Did my clerk actually hand me the twenty? I'd say, yes, because I believe I also had a five in my pocket from earlier in the day. That's gone too. Somewhere. In the same place where missing socks from the dryer go. Or missing panties (into the pockets of pervs or guys like me and Leopold Bloom). It'll turn up, I figure. Or not. One thing I know, I must give up. I must let it go. I cannot conjure it from its hidden metaphysical or physical place. It will turn up? By magic? My hope is I will turn the page of a book or sort the old newspapers or look under a chair (did that) and find the money some long-lost day. Or not. Give it up, you phony would-be Buddhist. Detachment? You can't even practice this tiny bit of letting go, you sanctimonious, possessed possessor. Let it go. Besides, there's no choice.

The next day, at work, for a brief moment I irrationally think of looking for the missing moulah there, in my desk drawer, for example, and chuckle at the grand absurdity of it. Later that day, at suppertime, with the television news on (I despise having the idiot box on during meals, but what the hey; not much fight left in me), ABC shows footage of the devastation left by the tornado in Greensburg, Kansas. One woman, I'm not sure of her name (Kathy Kelly?), says, "It's just stuff." She says it almost merrily, but not crazily, not post-traumatic-stressedly. She's maybe in her fifties (as if I know how to discern ages). She's sifting through rubble. The remains of her day, and her life, are missing in inaction. The shards of a splintered life surround her: ghosts of old photos, old recipes ("Recipes? I can get recipes, new recipes from someone else," she says, or words to that effect), surrealistic configurations of former furniture, silverware, sweaters, echoes of a life as recent as last week and forever ago. Stuff. The stuff of a life. And yet. And yet she gives ample evidence of being truly grateful, to be alive, whole, presumably surrounded by others just as alive. She does not say these words I've just written. She merely states, "It's just stuff," and declares it calmly, as a statement of Midwestern stubborn fact and acceptance, like acceptance of ordinary daylight.

"It's just stuff," she says

as breezily as a Willie Mays homer

sailing into the sun-drenched bleachers in left-field

at the old Seals Stadium

on a Tuesday afternoon

in May 1958.

Just stuff.