Loneliness

I write lots of little things down, sweetheart, as I think of them. Usually it’s some idea or a question and because I’m on my way out the door or in the middle of something without the time to sit at the keyboard here or open my notebook, I’ll grab whatever is nearby - maybe the back of an envelope or something - and write down the germ of the idea or a question for discussion or something that alludes to the thought that I want to write about in greater length later.

I’ve got quite a few of them going at any given time but the one I’m looking at right now written on the back of a piece of unopened mail is about loneliness. It reads as follows: “Loneliness is not doing laundry. Not washing your hair. Rarely going out.”

In just those three short sentences, little sweetheart, I can remember exactly what I was thinking and how terribly I was missing you in the moment I put pen to paper. And to be honest, those thoughts are rarely far from me. There’s often an underlying bit of unspoken thought narrating my everyday life and it is largely this: what does it matter?

Much of the time I can’t find a reason to do anything. In the moments when I am most activated it’s almost always because of you - something I want to tell you, or something I want to write about you, or something I want to share with someone else that is entirely about you - some precious memory or special story that conveys what a treasure you are and how unlike anyone I’ve ever know. Something to cherish.

I’ve said many times that you are my reason. When Danya told me long ago now, shortly after your tragic passing - and how tragic it is now too to realize that that itself is “long ago” - when she told me that I mustn’t harm myself, mustn’t take my own life or I “would never find you” - I took those words to heart. They cut deep into my being. Even after I asked her, so very moved and curious, what spiritual beliefs led her to know that and she had none to back it up, it didn’t matter.

Sometimes a great truth can be spoken by someone with their knowing its root, its source, the divine truth within which it is so manifestly grounded, like an anchor deep into the earth’s core set there by God himself.  Faith need not come from a believer, from one awoken. It only need be received. And held. And treasured. As I treasure you. I know I mustn’t harm myself but must instead wait for you to call and take me when it is my time. I cannot know when. Like a million things out of the grasp of my mortal mind, I cannot know that. I can only have faith.

And in my best moments I do. In my best moments my faith is firm and I am calm. But many more moments are filled with such terrible longing for you, my little sweetheart. And unmoored from the life-staining nourishment and the very gravity of your love, like ballast, that keeps me from simply blowing away, scattered into bits with the merest breeze, I cannot find my way. Cannot find my reason. Cannot go on to even try.

I heard something the other day, my love, or read it, I can’t remember which, it might’ve been Laurie Anderson quoting someone in “Heart of a Dog” that we must try to be able to “feel sad without being sad.” That’s a lot to unpack right there, let alone take up. But maybe there’s something to it.

I’ve got another one of these little notes that I mean to write upon and it relates to this. That note reads: “On Accepting Your Fate”. That’s a much bigger conversation and a separate one but it does have a relationship here to this theme of being so desperately lonely and not knowing what to do. I think it’s this: I’m going to be lonely. Of course I am. Remember how I told you what my friend Gina said when I read her what I wrote for your memorial. How she said “what a loss!”? Of course I’m going to be lonely. I don’t have you at my side. Even worse I’m not at your side. That may sound much like the same thing, identical, but the second thought has more power for me.

Of course I’m going to be lonely. But maybe knowing that, knowing that whatever is left of my life is going to be lonely one, a much reduced and smaller one, and that I just must go on until it is my time, maybe knowing that will help. Of course I’m going to be lonely. I need to get used to it. Not long so hard for what cannot be just now. Just for now.

Later, because I have faith and I know, we’ll be made whole, made one again, won’t we, my darling? I just need to hold on. And you… you’re still and always my reason. With all my love forever…