We can be lost in thought, or lost in a book. Schulz spends much of the “Lost” section exploring not the details of her father’s death or her own grieving, but the multiple meanings of the word “lost.” She first recounts its etymology, discovering that the word emerged from the Old English verb meaning “to perish.” For Shulz, “to lose” has “its taproot sunk in sorrow.” Over time, the word “lost” began to take on a wider variety of usages. As she writes, these particular words “seemed plain, plaintive, and lonely, like grief itself.” In “Lost,” the book’s first section, the author expresses her resistance to euphemisms for dying such as “passing away.” Such metaphoric language, she feels, “turns away from death’s shocking bluntness” and instead “chooses the safe and familiar over the beautiful or evocative.” Despite her rejection of such evasive language, she finds herself turning to one particular phrase after her father dies: “I have lost my father.” The idea of losing a loved one rang true to Schulz.
Schulz’s title, Lost & Found, establishes the structure of the three-part memoir. In her lyrical and deeply thoughtful memoir, Schulz recounts the emotional confluence of grieving for her father following his death and falling in love with a woman, whom she soon married. In her new book Lost & Found, Pulitzer Prize–winning essayist Kathryn Schulz comes to an understanding similar to the rabbi’s: the experience of grief and sadness and the experience of love and joy always happen at the same time, even when we are not fully aware of how much they are connected. While there are times when people might need one particular message more than the other, fundamentally both truths are always in our pockets: we are everything and we are nothing, at the same moment.
By reading these reminders, suggested the rabbi, human beings can maintain balance in their daily lives. When he was feeling powerful or important, he should instead read the words in his left pocket - “I am nothing but dust and ashes” - which would point out the humbleness of his true state.
Whenever he felt sad or distraught, the man could pull out the words to remind himself that his life was of boundless value. NINETEENTH-CENTURY RABBI Simcha Bunim of Peshischa told one of his followers to transcribe a quotation from the Talmud - “The world was created for me” - onto a slip of paper to keep in his right pocket.
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