My 90s Clay Flower Earrings. A Tale of Grief & Joy: Not a Death Story
I was once a young girl who was obsessed with the Earth Magic store at the mall.
Okay, I’m still obsessed with the Earth Magic store at the mall.
But in the mid-90s, it had a different vibe. Funky mushroom millefiori candles, Peace Frogs, and very stunning and chic clay flower earrings.
If I had to guess, I’ve had my beloved flower earrings since 1995.
Fast forward 30-ish years, and I have a 7-year-old daughter with newly pierced ears who wants to borrow my, now VINTAGE, flower earrings.
I tell myself it’ll be okay. I’m more invested in my daughter’s happiness than I am in my crusty old earrings, so I relent.
And she wears them with pride.
A smile spreads across my face whenever I look at her and see a little piece of my childhood occupying space in hers.
One night, she takes my earrings out so she can wear her hypoallergenic, more comfortable earrings to bed. She places my earrings in a small box on her vanity, filled with various other earrings and little treasures.
The next day, while tidying her room, she bumps the tiny box off her vanity.
Everything scatters.
She comes to me for help, and together we pick up all the tiny earrings and treasures.
Only one clay flower is found.
I run my fingers along the baseboards. I check tiny crevices and search under furniture. I look everywhere I can think to look.
Nothing.
I’m upset, but it’s not my daughter’s fault. I should have moved the earrings back to my bedroom after she took them out.
I let a couple of tears escape, and she notices.
I tell her that it’s okay. I’m just sad because I loved those earrings and I’ll miss them.
I take several deep breaths and put the lone earring back in my bedroom.
It doesn’t do me any good solo, but I can’t make myself throw it away.
Weeks pass.
I still occasionally notice the lonely earring and feel a pang of sadness.
Months pass.
The remaining earring gets covered by other jewelry, trinkets, and the debris of daily living.
I slowly begin to forget about it.
Then, even more months later, it’s evening and the regular bedtime hijinks with two kids are afoot.
Showers. Teeth brushing. Shenanigans.
Suddenly, my daughter yells, “MOM!” and comes running into my bedroom.
She has a massive grin on her face. Her whole body is overflowing with happiness and she can barely keep from jumping up and down.
Her hands are behind her back.
“I have something that will make you so happy!”
And she hands me my missing clay flower earring.
I cry.
I grin.
I hug her so tightly and thank her a thousand times.
She had found it underneath a piece of furniture that I am absolutely certain we had already looked beneath.
Clearly we missed it.
Maybe our cat found it first and batted it around her room until it eventually came to rest in the exact spot where she would find it.
Who knows?
What I do know is this:
I had joy in sharing my earrings with my daughter.
I grieved my little earring when I thought it was lost forever.
And then my joy grew when the pair was safely reunited.
What I remember most isn’t just the relief of finding that little earring. It’s the look on her face when she gave it back to me—the genuine delight she felt at having found something she knew mattered to me. And somehow, her joy became mine.
Without the grief of losing it, I never would have experienced that incredible moment of shared joy when my daughter found that treasure and returned it to me.
You can have grief and joy separately.
But together, they create something beautiful.
Grief is louder when something—or someone—has brought us immense joy and love.
And joy can be amplified by having first known the ache of loss.
Maybe that’s one of the strange, beautiful things about grief.
Joy doesn’t make the grief disappear. It makes the joy matter even more.
Maybe this story is about death a little bit after all.
