Loneliness is like a scalpel. It is an instrument to heal when we see in the hands of a surgeon. Or it may become a fatal device in the hands of a crook. The duality becomes quite significant when we correlate the portrayal of loneliness in our lives. It’s a healer or a destroyer in one stroke. More or less it depends how we would like to allow it to influence our lives. Do we use it as a healer or a destroyer?
Loneliness strikes you at its worst when you lose your dearest. We are caught depressingly unawares, to brood the absence of your loved one. We are likely to suffer the pangs every living moment. I’m putting forth my narration how I’m coping with the death of my wife a year ago.
She is the dearest and devoted. Her natural poise of balanced approach more or less held as emotional crutches to my family of four. She moved around in the house carrying the pleasantness of a wife and strictness of a mother. The moment I wake up I hear the voices of my kids arguing over trivial points. Somewhere from the kitchen a pleasant note from my wife chiding them would emerge. Their restful voices formed my background score as I got readied for my work. Listening to these sentimental wishful strokes gladdened me. How I’m blessed with the loving gifts – my wife and my kids.
Normally a family is meant our daily sunshine and a cushioning goalkeeper of our pains and pleasures. Routinely, running our regular grind, tallying the usual difficulties, the soothing chants at home never seemed, for many, that important. The theme never questioned so long as its rendering kept us fit and comfortable. Suddenly, one day you wake up to find your house hanging in confused silence. You find your entire mental functioning plunge tumbling down.
I faced a rude jolt when the lovable bond with my wife suddenly snapped. Death as an unforeseen quirk of fate saw me facing a huge vacuum filled with a heavy lull. At the age of fifty-seven, I’m not ready to live in this muted setting. I know it has enough charge to haunt me every minute hereafter. Realization of its shock invaded my body too fast: I’m in for the first bite of loneliness.
The bonfire of my days that followed filled with flaring flashes of loneliness. To stay light-heartedly balanced felt like standing on treadmill – whole day! It only exhausted me without moving anywhere. I initially, had a bitter time. It isn’t easy for a sensitive soul like me to fight back the dark shadows of discouragement. It’s felt like sleeping in a pit of rats and expecting a comfortable rest. The rats do what they are believed to do. They bite you; they attack you at their liking. That is what an abusing egoism of loneliness did to me. To rescue myself from these daily punches of depressing attacks I have to hold myself as a superman – emotionally.
For more than six months I was left to myself to nurse my bereavement. My children now very well settled are far away. Both of them worried about their professional and family pursuits. It’s up to me to think about the days ahead and the daily strain I have to face. I needed to find ways and energy to stand up and lead a normal life. Do I have the vigor and inventiveness to create the new daily life schedules? Forgetting the family luxuries, I enjoyed just a year ago. Yes, I think I can, and I will have to find my strength.
Reading books especially biographies underlines one aspect of outstanding human triumphs. Every page gives us a glimpse of adversities the heroic personalities withstood. And how they survived and stood tall confronting them. I wondered how courageous and steadfast they were and outshined their contemporaries. No one had reached their zenith with fewer limitations, fewer handicaps, and less discouraging circumstances. They never found success right away, but instead, with their faith in themselves, they created success.
With mighty wisdom packed within the scholarly books offering me the guidelines. I structured a cheering routine to challenge my dull moods I’m prone to infect with – every day. And it started like this.
The moment I woke up I found two fingers looking at me. Wagging, they asked me to touch one. I reasoned that the first finger represented vigor, bounce, and a quick burst of energy. The second one meant the guilt, escapism, self-pity. The fluttering fingers, meanwhile, would wait before I lazily moved to pick one. Here was the catch!
I’m widely awake now and quickly became aware of the shrill quietness in the background. It hit me like a dry blast. “I can’t listen to the voice of my wife, the laughter of my children.” I’m waiting for someone to stand to chorus heartily and cheerily pat me to choose for the day. Beaten, I noticed I have none; instead, transparent loneliness stood before me.
The two fingers wiggling before me are clues showing me in which way I must enter each day. The choice: should I make an unwholesome option and taste a horrible day. Certainly, for the situation, I’m in I would say a huge No!
By now, a year later, I trained myself to stay emotionally at ease. Whatever residual negative strains left, I had them wrapped tightly away from me. I made my first finger, my first choice, and my best friend. A vigorous thumbs up to start and set the day to dive into the pool of writing ideas. I’m helped with a good start in a mood to meditate, the freshness to read and alertness to think sanely. How I always wished to wake up not to let my lonely laden eye doesn’t look at the second finger?
This ‘choice’ ritual was played before me every day at sunrise the time I got moving for the day’s dispensing. I’m aware of the absence of any loving soul to share morning smiles and prayers. In a stifling situation like this, it became a tough job for me. How I have to assemble good judgment and start my day with focus and clarity.
Four out of five days I selected a favorable mode to kick start my day. It wasn’t easy to climb into that cheery mechanism. Often I found early mornings’ the heaviness hanging down upon me. The webs of despair draped in each room reminded memories. I found teasing quietness in the wardrobe, within the folds of saris’ left unused, untouched by my wife after her untimely departure. Loneliness at this early hour speaks in most disobedient roughness, “This is your everyday challenge. How you fight it out, take control of it is your daily battle”.
I had to defy many dominant mental patterns to free myself from the pliable emotional chains. One good aspect is that I am enjoying an abundance of privacy. I learned to come to terms with long spells of silence. Further, I created a working pattern to remain keyed on to assemble my ideas into typed words. Undisturbed, I sat in front of the keyboard and tapped into my creative deposits and stayed put for long uninterrupted schedules. It was my daily slaving to think, to sweat and hit the right buttons.
This daily design has positively taken care of me. I collected a pint-size pleasure defeating the fate-imposed quarantine. I looked at words, at the end of the day I poured out, as sizzling recollections, dancing on my computer screen. I pulled together at sundown a reward – a blanket of restfulness to go to sleep for the day. The self-imposed writing installment completed – a diminutive win and calmness restored. I had the last laugh at my puzzled loneliness.
I’m aware that I’m not that good at writing. I know my memory is irritatingly unstable, and my patience easily breakable. Despite this discouraging self-portrait, I picked up with fervor the line of writing. But my wishing: with the little efforts I bled every day that would allow me to scribble down my memories.
I desired to recapture in words the thirty-four years of togetherness with Mani, my wife. The downside was that I started appreciating the way I cohabited with my ‘shadow of loneliness’. I’m enjoying its presence and its helpfulness. In my case, it gifts every day with unlimited silent hours to sit with my choicest books. And to see myself parked for long hours hitting the keyboard.
I didn’t take up writing with a view that someone would be glad about its content and candor. Or the eloquence with which my expressions offered homage to my wife. I’m doing it as a matter of self-discipline of my way of filling the void created by the absence of my wife.
I’m glad that today my ‘hard nut loneliness’ is my motivation and my encouraging voice. It doesn’t allow me not to reminisce badly about anything related to past. And furthermore, it disciplined me to sit down at the computer and recollect one flashback after another. And the day ends with satisfaction that I’m wrapping my memories in a readable fabric.
I’m working today with a contended cause. I’m pleased to have elected the best decisions that kept me engaged and actualized. I’m helped to ignore the discouraging noises constantly hurting around. Each day I find them louder and waiting to pull me away from my course. I know my strong mind, I have trusted wouldn’t grant them room to dampen my spirits. I realized that this phase of my life is bitter, but I’m indeed grateful that my wits are impressive enough to take good advantage of ‘my free will’ retirement days.
Trustingly, I chose a path; determinedly, I recognized it takes a tough mind and thick skin to hike along, alone. I took into stride my companionless long-winding-days. My writing craft, to enrich it, I started with tiny efforts. It is something; I know have to work slowly.
To shine as a good writer, I must also be a good reader. Hence I included, in a day, as many reading hours as my fifty-seven year’s old eyes would sustain. Hopefully, I aspired all my efforts would afford me two things. One, it doesn’t see me as a languishing outgrowth of my ‘live alone’ status. Second, my morale and my meditation would give me enough support to realize my goal – to be a writer. Blessedly, my loneliness has provided ink to my calling – the writing.