Where's Waldo?

So where is Waldo, exactly?To answer that question, you’d have to define what Waldo is. Waldo is often displayed as a French man, cheerily dressed in white and red. But to me, Waldo’s value as a symbol transcends that pictorial description.Waldo is the things we lose, and the things we’re looking for. He is the one who got away, the one who we were not ready to let go of, the one we still want back. Waldo is the friend we lost and the boy/girl who dumped us, the pet who ran away and the relative who died too soon. So we hunt for him. That’s the key characteristic of Waldo; something you look for even though his very charm lies in his elusiveness.We as humans are drawn to that elusiveness, because if we’re still hunting for something, that means it’s not really lost and we don’t have to deal with how we feel about losing it. Hunting for Waldo is akin to the first stage of grief, to the denial one feels upon the initial impact of loss. But it’s not where you’ll find him.The second stage of grief is anger, and obsessiveness. For anyone who’s ever been handed a Where’s Waldo picture book, you’ll understand the passion that grips you to just find him, goddamnit. You can’t stop because you refuse to let a children’s picture book defeat you. More seriously, when somebody is gone, it’s easy to lose yourself in obsessing over them. If you sit long enough in a scattered pile of things they owned, things they left, you can still feel them with you. Sorta. It’s never as good as the real thing, but when it’s the best they have, people settle for it. And while obsessing might be the key to finding Waldo in the picture book, this stage is not where Waldo rests either.Waldo lies in acceptance. Waldo is in the stolen moment to think about the way she ducked her head when she laughed, letting her hair tumble down in front of her face, beautifully shy. Waldo is in the way you hug the teddy bear he gave you, remembering how solid his arms used to feel, before putting it down and