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July 07, 2002 |
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March 22
FOUND by Melissa Bontempo
in Ohio University, Ohio
This book was found next to a dumpster at Ohio University. I can't remember the date, but I probably found it near the spring of 2000.
It belonged to an old woman who had presumably passed away recently. Other personal items, including a handwritten joke book, a funeral register, and a sheet of paper that listed all her medical conditions were nearby. This book is several decades old. The cover says "Birthdays" and is re-bound with tape. Other than birthdays, she recorded facts from her life, when each of her friends died, anniversaries, the circumstances of her pet's death, surgeries, etc. I found this page, where she notes her husband's burial particularly heartbreaking, as she retraced her own words repeatedly.
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Find Another House August 25, 2007 |
Gender Studies February 24, 2002 |
Unite! January 16, 2005 |
Sunset December 21, 2006 |
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
This is the reason why I love Foundmagazine. Although I have no idea who this woman was, this one slip of paper gave me such insight into her life. Her sorrow is heartbreakingly apparent through only sixteen words. I hope she and Joe have found peace.
I agree, Julie. Its a real privilege to see some of these snippets of other's lives. This is one of the special ones.
this is my all-time favorite find. it broke my heart.
This made me cry.
How horribly sad...I would feel the same way after losing my husband. I wish I could of held her and taken away some of her sorrow and lonliness.
This hurts to read because one day my wife will die and my world will collapse (or more likely, I will die and her world will collapse). It helps to remind me that we're all participating in the same pattern, and that there's no escaping so much of it. Every earthly joy is stained with pain.
In the face of the inevitability of death, the printed words on the page take on fresh meaning, though it feels ironic.
Kyrie Eleison
Heartbreaking... but probably my favorite in Found. Thank you also for the background.
This find is so sad. It seems really valuable to me and I have never met or heard of the woman it belonged to. I can't believe her relatives or friends discarded the book like they did.
this is amazing. the way she re-traced the words moved me more than i can say.
this one gave me a horrible, stabby heart pang. :( so sad. the sentiment of the note itself is sad, but thinking that either her family threw this type of thing away, or maybe she just had no family or friends left to collect her belongings just makes me want to cry. this is a great find, really remarkable and memorable, to me anyway.
Wow. It's too bad there was no one in her family to keep this. How sad.
This made me cry, too. And made me a little envious that she maintained a deep love for her husband over the years...
>^-^<
and this is why i wish to die before any of my close friends/partner. Its heatbreaking to let go.
This makes me sad because I imagine this is how my grandmother felt after my grandfather died. She probably still feels this way.
God, what I wouldn't give to find a love that was as strong as theirs, that would last me my whole life...
wow. this is the only found/postsecret that elicited a tear from me. such pain, so raw. and the red pen, retraced over and over...
i echo:
kyrie eleison
kyrie eleison
kyrie eleison...
wow. this is the only found/postsecret that elicited a tear from me. such pain, so raw. and the red pen, retraced over and over...
i echo:
kyrie eleison
kyrie eleison
kyrie eleison...
I attended OU from 00-04. This piece strikes me with particular sadness. I wonder if I ever saw this woman, maybe sitting on her porch. Or maybe I walked past her grave on my way to one of my classes. Haunting.
That date on the page is my birthday
So moving, especially as my SO's name is Joe, too. And I know exactly what she means when she says "God have mercy on him." And when he travels on, my life will collapse around me too. And yet, we go on living. Eheu.
It's sad to me, how her writing becomes print, and the last few lines look reckless and climb upwards, like she started crying. I can only imagine...
I want to cry...
This is beautiful. The thing that humbles me most is the fact that her handwriting starts fluidly and purposefully, but by the end you can see she struggles to carry on. The last phrase "God have mercy on him" is especially tragic as her writing becomes child-like, reflecting how we become so fragile and broken with the impact of death. We have all and will all feel like this someday.
Hello to Jon in La Mirada!
http://www.bod.ch/index.php?id=1132&objk_id=845
To Penny (not my sister-in-law Penny??), Laura, Orinoco, Jess: a hug and love to you all in UK. Maybe we'll meet one day.
And to Julie and Manda and Tina and Jessica and all of you wherever we all are.
Too moving for words, and our hearts go out to this poor lady. x
This broke my heart. It reminds me of what my grandmother used to do with her pocket calendars. She would use them as her diaries to make notes of her friends, her family, herself. So sad.
This is probably the saddest find ever. And most real. It's a find that expresses real pain and pain that we have/will have at some point in our lives.
What a contrast between the prayer and what she writes.
Seems rather crazy and disturbed to me.
This is so beautiful and heart-wrenching. I hope this lady and her husband are reunited together forever. This brought tears to my eyes...a thousand words could not express what these do in this honest, graphic find.
Requiem aeternam. Dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
No poem, no movie, no saying, no song, no art, no book, and, indeed, no mere words or symbols in any form contain a more powerful expression of the human condition than this woman's simple and sincere expression of grief. She lays the soul naked, without pride, without shame, and without pretense. As Linda in Iowa said, this dear woman's words are at once "beautiful and heart-wrenching."
This is my birthday, kind of depressing to know that the day that celebrates my life on was was also a day that death brought such sadness.