You Are Not Lost

Microseason No. 53, October 28-November 1

Dear Ones,

There is a woman walking in the Minnesota woods with the ghost of her husband.

Though she can no longer feel the warmth of his hand, she keeps her fingers firmly interlaced with his—where they have always fit—

just so.

And though his body is barely visible now, growing fainter each day; she tries to keep him with her, tethered in this world.

please stay.

Mushrooms in Johnston Mill Nature Preserve by Ann Collins

Days pass. He has stopped speaking now and can only gesture weakly, tenderly, his hand upon his heart, nodding in gentle acceptance of this fading.

This finitude, their parting.

i’m sorry.

When Greta can no longer see him, she begins writing and rewriting a continuous string of love letters to Anders. In each letter, the message is always the same:

come back. come back to me.

Writing on fallen leaves by Ann Collins

Eventually, Greta forgets that she has three beautiful children to care for.

She forgets so many things. One day, she forgets to come back altogether.

Some might say that Greta has become chronologically displaced—a Time Traveller—now moving in a way that makes no sense to others.

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She was still out walking old familiar trails, looking for her lost love when they placed her in “a safe place.”

It was 1921.

The Minnesota State Hospital for the Insane in St. Peter, MN

Greta wandered those halls for several years, searching for, but never finding her dear Anders.

She died there on a beautiful autumn day in 1928.

Sometimes in my dreams

there is a large building: dimly lit, institutional,

filled with strangers.

I wander, lost inside these hallways.

Greta was my maternal Great-great-grandmother from Finland. She was the doorway through which generations of my family have come to be here.

Today, this is all that remains of her story. No one in my family can recall anything else about her, though she made our lives possible.

This breaks my heart.

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Where do the dead go when the dead die?

They go into photographs.

Albums.

—Robert Sward

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I want to know what made her happy, what her laugh sounded like, her favorite food, her obsessions, her fears.

So lately, I’ve been taking long walks in the forest with Greta’s memory—an attempt to carry and preserve the small fragments of her story that remain.

Mostly, I want her to be happy. Remembered. Loved.

She nodded, and the two walked

into the forest, as though on a path

already marked and trod.

—Andrew Krivak, The Bear

In this season of longing and remembrance, I hope that you know how much your life matters.

Thank you for your presence here, which is a gift to me: yesterday, today and always.

Let’s keep walking together.

I’ll see you in a new microseason,

xo Ann