Kazuo Ishiguro writes: "When we lost something precious, and we’d looked and looked and still couldn’t find it, then we didn’t have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day when we were grown up, and we were free to travel around the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.”
Norfolk wasn't just a repository of lost objects. It also held missed opportunities, words left unspoken, and roads not taken, friends who grew apart, and other experiences forever receding from the present.
Heart shaped pendant
My mom gave it to me when I was in middle school but it sat in a box for years because I thought it looked too dowdy. Everyone else had those silver Tiffany chokers. Then in senior year or maybe junior year of undergrad I began to wear it continuously. Before then I didn't have one necklace that I wore all the time. But I soon got used to it hanging around my neck when I woke up in the morning.
I lost it the day I left Detroit Metro Airport for Denmark. Later walking past the dancing water fountain in McNamara terminal I felt the chain sliding oddly around my neck. It had broken but was still draped around my neck. But the pendant was nowhere to be found. I must have lost it when I was taking off my layers at the security checkpoint.
Before I left Denmark I bought a daisy pendant, a very popular design by Danish jeweler Georg Jensen, as some sort of compensation, but it's just not the same.
A pair of angled forceps
My grandfather had a tremendous influence on my life. He was also an otolaryngologist. He taught me never to run around, laugh too hard, or talk too much while eating nuts. One of the last times I saw him before he died, he gave me a pair of forceps not because he wanted me to be a doctor but because they're just so useful for picking at things!
Sometimes when I get something valuable, I squirrel it away in a safe place. But I decided that I would honor his memory by actually going to use this tool, or at least looking at it everyday, so I kept it at home on my desk in a pen cup. But somehow throughout the years of undergrad, I lost it.
You can by forceps shaped exactly like the one I had at any surgical supply store. But of all the things I've lost, I would most like to find this one. I would give a lot to get it back again.
My mom dug through a lot of boxes of my school projects, notes and childhood mementos to find this little slip of onionskin paper. It says my birth date, time, weight and was signed by the attending physician, who apparently was a family friend of my grandparents. There's no way my mom will let me hold on to anything important anymore.
The movie adaption of Never Let Met Go has been reviewed by various media outlets. But if you haven't read the book, you MUST NOT read any reviews of the film or book that give away the reason for the children's isolation. You will do yourself a great disservice.
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