The Cartographer of Lost Things

The Cartographer of Lost Things

My grandmother made maps of things that were gone. She didn't draw places that still existed. She drew the spaces where things used to be.

She would sit at her kitchen table with paper. The paper would fall apart at the edges. She drew streets that didn't exist anymore. There was the bakery where she bought bread during the war. There was the movie theater where my grandfather kissed her for the time. There was the tree where she buried a box of secrets when she was nine.

I was twelve when I said to her "You can't make a map of something thats gone."

She didn't look up. She just said, "You can't make a map of something that doesn't exist."

Her maps were very beautiful. They also made me sad. She used gold ink to draw the things that were gone. They shone like suns on the old paper. She made a map of our town. It was like a ghost town. She drew every building that was torn down. She drew every garden that was covered with pavement. She drew every staircase that led to a door that led to a room where a woman used to laugh.

When my grandmother died I got all her maps. There were 342 of them. I spread them out on my floor. I saw what she was doing.

She wasn't making maps of the things we lost.

The Cartographer of Lost Things was making maps of love.

The bakery was a place she went to every Sunday with her father. The movie theater was where my grandfather held her hand. The tree was where she buried a locket. She also buried a flower that had been pressed and a note that said she would remember that day forever.

She did remember everything.

I took her map. It was the one of our house before it caught on fire. It was before my mother left us. It was before the house became quiet. I hung it on my wall. The gold ink sparkled. I saw the kitchen table where we used to eat soup. I saw the hallway where I learned to ride a bike. I saw the bedroom window where she told me "The world will hurt everyone but some of us will become strong in the places where we are broken."

I touched the lines on the map, with my finger.

If someone draws something then its not really lost.