I lost my pillow.
Not something to be too upset about. After all, it is just a pillow.
But maybe not.
I have had this pillow since I was probably three or four. My grandmother made it for me. Duck down. A blue, red, and white cover filled with large letters and numbers. Made for a small child. Made for me.
Cool to the head.
I slept on it from the time I was four.
As I look back over 50 years of my life, it may sound strange but I have always had that pillow. It was what I slept on while living on Nyquist Circle. Times I can barely remember. It went with me when we moved further out into the country on County Road 16-A. I was seven then.
I slept on it during those awkward pre-teen times, during my teenage years, even when I first went to college.
My roommates thought it was just a small flat pillow. Nothing special. I probably didn’t think too much of it myself. But it was important enough to take to college with me.
Graduating. Moving to New Orleans. Getting married.
Always sleeping on that same pillow.
When I got married, I don’t think my wife knew about my pillow. I didn’t think to tell her. Sort of a strange conversation, “Liz, before we get married, I have to tell you about my pillow.”
We just got married…and there was my pillow.
I’m sure sometime early on, I told her about it.
“My grandmother made it for me. I think she made it out of duck down. All I know is it is soft, cool, and great to sleep on. I have slept on it all my life.”
Made sense to her. She even helped me take care of it. The poor thing probably had thirty different covers sewn over it. I would wear one out and my mom would make a new one. My wife took over the task after we were married.
I took it on most of our trips. Not all of them. Sometimes I forgot to take it. Sometimes I simply didn’t want to take it. The chances of losing it or forgetting it were too great I guess.
Once we left it in a hotel. We had already traveled several hundred miles before I remembered. We called the hotel.
“Did you happen to find a small pillow in Room 214 [or whatever number it was]?”
“Hold on, let me check. …Yes, we did.”
“Would you mind mailing it back to us? We are too far away to come back and get it.”
“Sure. What’s the address?”
A few days later…when we were home…a Priority Mail package arrived with my pillow.
It was sort of like a mini-reunion. Like a lost friend coming home.
I suppose this all sounds sort of weird. Childish. Like Linus and his blanket. Or the childhood teddy bear that it is kept way too long. Until its stuffing is coming out.
But in a strange way that pillow was a link to my past. To my grandmother. A woman I barely got to know. She lived in Illinois while we lived in Florida. She died before I was a teenager.
Yet she made me that pillow. I am not even sure why. And as far as I know, she didn’t make one for anyone else. Or maybe this one was passed down from all my older brothers and sisters and I, being the youngest, just got to keep it.
Now that the pillow’s seemingly gone, I feel like I want to know its history. I feel like I want to honor it some way. Write it a tribute.
I guess I am.
It’s interesting how objects can carry memories. You see something and it reminds you of some event, some person, some relationship.
It even tends to attach itself to you.
I saw that during the flood that hit Baton Rouge several years ago. People lamented over lost stuff. On one hand, you think, “It’s just stuff. It can be replaced.” But on the other hand, it wasn’t “just stuff.” Many of the items swept away or ruined by the flood couldn’t be replaced. They were attached to memories. They were attached to people.
We are embodied creatures. Our soul expresses itself through physical members of our body. And with our physical members we create “things.” We buy “stuff.” We possess “possessions.” In a strange way, our soul extends itself out through our physical members and finds some kind of attachment to physical objects.
Yes, we can go too far and find our identity in the things we own. But the other side of the coin is to try to act like these things don’t matter. Be the ascetic. The mystic. The other worldly stoic who is too transcendent to notice or to mourn the loss of mere earthly objects.
But God created a physical world and gave us a physical body to enjoy it.
It is not “spiritual” to act like things don’t matter. It is actually spiritual to realize that they do.
So back to my pillow.
I left it at a hotel near Zion National Park. A La Quinta to be exact. Room 521. I have called twice to see if, by any chance, someone found it.
It has to be somewhere. Maybe the cleaning lady wrapped it up in the linens and it is yet to be discovered. Maybe she discarded it. Maybe she took it home to give it to her grandchild. Maybe it ended up under the bed for some future guest to discover.
Maybe I’ll get a phone call that it has been found.
All I know is that for now, it is lost.
The last physical object from my childhood is gone.
Except my own physical body.
And reality says that one day it will be gone too.
But I find it ironic, and mildly comforting, that I lost my pillow near Zion.
It reminds me that there is a hope for all things that are lost.
They can be found.
They can even be remade, renewed, redeemed.
The physical won’t be discarded. It will be transformed.
No more tears. No more loss. No more disease. No more death.
Because of a physical Savior who physically died to make all “things” new (Revelation 21:5).
That’s the real beauty of Zion.
And maybe my pillow will be there too.
Being held by my grandmother who I’ll have all eternity to get to know.