When you lose or misplace something and can’t find it, it can drive you nuts. You look everywhere, often ten times in the same place. Even when the box is empty and you’re sure you didn’t see it in there, for some reason, you still keep looking in there. Sometimes it dawns on you that you might never find that lost item again and you get upset or you move on to replacing it or forgetting about it. But how do you cope when the thing you lost has a connection to something, or someone, important to you? What if the item had a connection to you personally? Perhaps it was connected to something you love to do but on top of that it had a strong connection to someone close who passed away?

Just such a thing happened to me a few days ago. I am a leisure painter and I have a watercolour toolbox in which I keep all my paints, brushes and other painting paraphernalia. One of the items in there was a small mint tin with a hinged lid in which I kept small painting bits and bobs. It sat on the upper shelf of my toolbox so every time I opened it, the silver tin with the Swiss Navy logo would shine at me.

Then one day when I opened it, I noticed a glaring space on the upper shelf but couldn’t work out why the area looked empty but I didn’t dwell on it. Then while I was in the middle of a drawing, I needed something that was in the box so when I went to reach for the box, it wasn’t there.

I was frantically searching in the toolbox, emptying out its contents over and over again. I then ran home, convinced it was in one of the other places where I kept my art supplies. I had an image in my head of moving it into one of those places. I rummaged about over and over again but it was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the image was a false memory.

I ran back down to where I was drawing to look in my other bags thinking it might have fallen out of the box into the bigger bag in which I kept my toolbox. Since that day I’ve been frantically rummaging around. I’ve even looked in places that it’s not likely to be. I now have horrible visions of having left it at one of the tables in a food court I regularly sit in. But how can that be when I always look back at where I was sitting?

I am still looking for it and, oddly enough, in the same places that I’ve looked before. In the short term, I don’t think I’ll stop looking for it. But I am also fast running out of other places to look, hoping it is hiding in a corner or under something waiting to be found.

I’ve not been able to sleep peacefully, nor have I been able to eat. I feel extremely uncomfortable wondering where it went. It was something that became part of my art box since it had been sitting in it for nearly 10 years and now I don’t know where it is.

I will always wonder if it accidentally got thrown out. Or if, indeed, I did leave it somewhere or even dropped it and didn’t hear it fall, though, to me, that seems somewhat remote. I do wonder, however, if I took it out of the box for a particular reason, though I cannot think of one, and put it somewhere but don’t remember where.

I think it will always prey on my mind. But I also know that, as time goes by, I might forget about it. People have suggested that I put something similar in the spot on the toolbox shelf but unfortunately I cannot find anything. I’ve talked to all the shops and most look blank. I’ve even written to the company that used to make them and have had no reply. If anyone reading this has any suggestions to help, please do let me know…I’m VERY sad….