Lost Treasures



Lost Treasure

  The text simply said "Well the  Bride and Groom have been broken beyond repair."

Sadly, I knew immediately what that meant. The bride and groom in question were a simple little inexpensive Lefton cake topper that my wife's grandmother had given her before we got married  nearly thirty years ago. Throughout our entire marriage that little piece has sat in a number of places in our home, but always somewhere that my wife could enjoy the simple beauty of it. It's most recent perch has been in a small little display that she had sitting by her favorite perch in the living room. It was nestled away in small metal tin that resembled a gazebo with colored windows surrounding it.

This little figurine had been a part of our lives for a long time. I would like to say that it was in mint condition, but the truth is that it had been broken once before. That time, it was dropped and it was just a small issue. The groom simply broke in half, but with the help of a little glue and a black sharpie, you would never have known. This time, I could tell from the tone of my wife's text that it wasn't quite that simple this time. I was away at work so I simply told her to "gather up the pieces".

Her next text reminded me that her Grandma had given it to her and I knew immediately that the hurt would run much deeper than first thought. You see, my wife lost her Father last March. He had been ill for a while and their relationship had been strained for a long time, but that is a post for another day. That death preceded the death of her Grandma by about six weeks. She has really struggled with those two deaths more than I was expecting and more than I think that she was expecting. So the sudden loss of a simple treasure suddenly had so much more meaning. It was no longer about the figurine, it was about lost treasures that can never be recovered or restored. It was about death and the loss of loved ones. It was about life and the brevity of it. It was about when things are broken beyond repair no matter how much we would like to fix them. Simply put, it was about life.

My wife calls me a plodder. I really am not sure if she is saying this in a good or a bad way, but I guess that it really does not matter. There are few peaks and valleys for me, mostly I just plod along dealing with the issues of life as I come across them. So in that same manner, when I arrived home that night about 10:30, I asked her where the pieces were. She teared up a little bit and shook a small cardboard box and I could tell that her text was probably correct. She handed the box over to me and I poured them out on the table and I began to study them as she went to her favorite spot and settled in to play a game of spider to help her wash away the day.



Restored Bride & Groom



I slowly and methodically picked up each and every piece examining it very closely. Then I went and got some super glue and I began to very carefully place the pieces back together like some type of cruel jigsaw puzzle. Small pieces suddenly became larger pieces and larger pieces became larger yet. Then as if by some will of it's own, the figurine suddenly looked like the Bride and Groom all over again. I walked into the living room and handed it to her and you would have thought that I had given her the moon. Gone was the sadness that had filled her face and voice since early in the day. Gone was that despair that had settled over her like a cloud. In it's place was a beaming smile and giggles.

I have always figured myself as a fixer. When things were broken, I fix them. That is just part of the plodder nature. Unfortunately there are a limited number of things in this life that I can fix. Even the things that I do fix, if you look closely, you will see the cracks that tell you that I was there. I can't make things like they were before but sometimes, like with this simple little inexpensive treasure, I can restore it to the point that the cracks fade away and the smile and the memories return.

GW