The Tiny Book of Enormous loss

The tiny book of enormous loss…

This book is a collection of tiny bits of enormous loss, generously donated by people like you who read this text and held this book in their hands, just like you are doing now. 

I invite you to think about a person you lost, and to think about the emptiness you experience in the wake of that loss. Think about the size and shape of that emptiness. Maybe it feels small to you now, like a mostly healed wound, or maybe its so enormous and encompassing that size and shape aren’t concepts that you relate to it.  I am inviting you to take the needle from the front of the book and pierce a hole in one of the pages. The hole does not represent the loss, instead it is a tiny piece of your emptiness. I am asking you to give away that tiny piece of the emptiness to me, so that I can store it in this little book, along with tiny pieces of the emptinesses left behind from my losses, and the losses of others. 

When you pierce the hole, watch the needle break the surface of the page, and turn a tiny piece of the plane into a tiny emptiness. As it happens, please know that you are transferring the tiniest little bit of your emptiness to that space. If you are not ready to give away even a tiny little bit of your emptiness, that’s ok I understand. It took me almost ten years to make the first hole in this book. I wasn’t ready to let even the teeniest tiniest little bit of emptiness go. If you’re not ready, don’t do it. Please don’t just make a hole anyway, I don’t want a book full of meaningless holes. I am asking you for something huge, and if you are ready and willing to give me a tiny piece of your emptiness. I am so grateful for this bold and generous gift from you. 

After you make the hole, look at it, and feel that that tiny bit of emptiness has left you. It's now mine, or maybe ours, but either way— it’s being held in this book. You aren’t holding it any more. You can keep the rest of your emptiness or give me more later, or give it to someone else, or leave it elsewhere. After I made my first hole in the book, I found myself pricking holes and digging holes and tearing holes in things. Leaving little bits of my emptinesses in places where I felt they belonged. Like places where memories of my person were anchored. I can visit those holes. I imagine that at some point I might start forgetting where I left them and see a hole and wonder if that hole was a tiny piece of my emptiness that I left there. Right now I can still picture every hole I made.

When I think about the holes on these pages, I think about positive and negative spaces. Negative spaces are emptinesses between the positive spaces. But we know there isn’t really any such thing as emptiness, the more we try to understand emptiness the more we find stuff in there. These spaces are places where some matter has been removed, and replaced with something else that’s less tangible. Oxygen, nitrogen, dust, light, sadness, relief, longing…. These are all somethings, not the somethings we are used to being there, something elses.

The holes are a collection and a collection can’t be made up of nothing. It’s valuable to me. It’s a collection I’ve dreamed about for years, and I thank you for donating to it. I promise I will take good care of it. I will keep it safe.

Thank you, and I am sorry for your loss.