Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness

by Kathryn Schulz

It was good to laugh so much, and unexpected. Helping your aging parents move out of their longtime home is an exercise in watching the literal merge at every moment with the symbolic: the necessity of parting with so much all at once, the doors that close permanently behind them, the diminishing of the space they occupy in the world. I had thought, beforehand, that I would feel, in the midst of all this, a terrible two-way sadness, a sense of loss about the future as well as the past. But what I actually felt, along with the pleasure of being with my family, was tremendously lucky. I had learned, during my father’s long decline, to be just as grateful for what didn’t happen as for what did, and so I was relieved to be moving my parents out of that house while they were still there to laugh alongside us, before every hour we spent in it and every object we took out of it would have been steeped in grief.