more than keys

I have now made yet another sacrifice to New York: My keys. To lose one’s keys is always annoying, but this loss is even more intense, because on my keys I carried Oso’s last dog tag. And this loss is even more infuriating because I must have simply dropped them on the sidewalk in front of our apartment…It’s the only place I was between getting home last night and getting inside. Who would take keys? Probably the same person who took the mattress but not the futon frame, and who rummaged through our trash.

All morning, I paced around the apartment, searching under, between and above everything here. Quizzed my poor husband until he told me to stop. Searched the trash twice, walked around the block even more times. How could they be gone? How could that little piece of silver that I rubbed on all my subsequent dog walks without him be gone?

Finally, I gave in, called a locksmith. My full name was on Oso’s tag, and while it was an old address, from an old life back in Jersey, if it was anyone other than a homeless person who picked up my keys, I could be found. True irony.

And a lesson from this place, I think, in transience, yet again. We hold on to things that signify others, as if those things form some last link, a crucial tie that keeps the lost ones with us. A symbol of how he was mine. It said so, right there in etched steel. But it can’t be true. Oso’s still gone, tag on my key chain or not, and I’m still here, only slightly safer behind a new lock on our door.