Reflections On Two Seasons Of Loss: Absurd And Devastating

Kathryn Schulz was, throughout her life, a highly organised person. Then, on a summer holiday in Portland, she started misplacing things - from her t-shirt to her truck. In the first half of this essay, she tells an absurd and funny story of her first losing things, attempting to find an explanation for this, and finally, a remedy. 

The second half of this essay is about a different kind of loss - the death of the author's father, whom she'd been close with. She talks about different stages of grief, and strange behaviours it leads to in otherwise perfectly rational people: like looking for the person you lost or believing in the afterlife.

This essay, which begins as a funny sketch and ends as a reflection on the most painful kind of loss one can encounter, is a brilliant thought-piece from which to start one's own reflection about emotions and of the way we get attached to things and people.