Confronting Loss

So yesterday Alea and I were having a wonderful day...a leisurely walk through Hyde Park over to Kingsbridge and Harrods. We walked around the store...mesmerized by the displays and sheer quantities of things and people, and truth to be told...we got a little lost! Had to find our way around, down and around to the "Green Man" Pub on the lower ground level where we had a delicious lunch watching some of Wimbledon on the "tellie".

And then we walked along to Green Park, a smaller city park that I used to walk through everyday to go to work when I lived in the Victoria area and worked on Curzon Street, a rather posh street in the Mayfair area of the city. I had to use the "loo" quite badly so we found one at the Green Park tube station...all was well until Alea accidentally dropped the camera out of her jacket pocket onto the floor, and when she went to pick it up (along with being a little distracted by a non-flushing toilet), it was gone. Just like that...gone. The bathroom attendant tried to help us find it, but my hunch is that 2 girls who left quite quickly just before us snatched it up and took off with it before Alea quite realized what was happening....

It really has been quite the shock for both of us...for me, 5 weeks of great pictures dating back to my first evening in Spain even before starting to walk the Camino, and for Alea, 3 weeks of our adventures and travels, including pictures of a huge banana in a window display, her Nana's home that she grew up with the beautiful dolphin bird bath still out front, and a picture of her Granfer's "Old Member" page in the alumni book at Queen's College at Oxford University.

We were shocked, angry, and unbelievably sad...

We tried going back to the bathroom in hopes of a miracle...but nothing was found.

We just sat in the park for a while, stunned...and then we decided to just get up, walk and move our bodies...so we headed to Mayfair and Curzon Street. We think we found my old building, if I remembered the address correctly. We then continued up South Audley Street toward Oxford Street...another area where I had also worked back in 1982. We passed by Grosvenor Square where the American Embassy has been...we seem to walk into any park we come across so we of course walked into this park as well. As we walked, we had been laughingly asking ourselves, "What are you grateful for right now?" "What else are you grateful for?"

We passed by an area within the park that looked very interesting and so we read the plaque by it. It turned out to be the Memorial to the 67 British citizens who had been killed in the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center. It had pillars made of solid oak trees, and beautiful plants and flowers that were chosen intentionally for their meaning and that had also been included in the Queen's posey for the Memorial Service for these people. Without our even discussing it, we both read each and every name of the people who had been killed...

And this helped us to realize that our loss was nothing in comparison...these people had lost their lives, and their families had lost a loved family member. We had lost a camera, and many pictures, to be sure, but we were safe, we still had each other, and we still had our treasured experiences from this journey and pilgrimage. No one can take that from us, camera or no camera, pictures or no pictures.

I realized that when I woke up this morning that the gift, or perhaps even the miracle, is that we have to internalize this journey, remember and imprint the experiences within ourselves, and fully own and integrate each and every experience, and each and every internal picture of these experiences. We don't just get to spill it out as we share our pictures - we get to re-create our journey, and our pilgrimage, and our re-connecting with place, family and friends, in a deep and meaningful way that only encourages us to each integrate the experience more deeply and with more meaning.

I had to keep reminding myself yesterday that there is a silver lining in every experience, especially the ones that seems negative. So I woke up this morning with that gift, and even though it is not the way I would have preferred it, it is the way it is...we cannot change that now. We will never get the camera or the pictures back, but we do have this amazing experience, and what a wonderful journey it has been.

So we are off to go to the National Gallery via a double-decker bus and to do some more walking around London. Today is our last full day here, for tomorrow we fly back to the States. So we are going to enjoy this day to the fullest, taking in and imprinting the many images and experiences of this day. And then tonight my godfather, John Smith, is taking us to the theater to see "Wicked" right near Victoria Station. What a great way to end our journey, with our last night in England, and Europe for that matter, at the theater.

Next time I will most likely be blogging state-side!