So Blue

I've been thinking about loneliness, recently. Partly because of losing my friend Sooz and realizing that I didn't have anyone to replace her with, even if someone could have replaced her, which they can't. If you see what I mean.

How can a new friend replace someone who has known you for twenty some years, has shared your office space, has put together Office Depot desks with you and not even lost it and started screaming, has buffered you from your snotty daughter-in-law during togetherness episodes at berry-picking farms and gone real estate shopping/dreaming with you in the northern counties? Not to mention all the clothes swapping that went on.

I'm not the world's easiest person to befriend. I just don't put much out there until I know someone pretty well. I'm the one who listens, not the one who vents. Also, with this Old business going on, I don't attract much positive attention, out there in the possible friend pool situation. So, it's pretty random, who I wind up with access to.

My mother spent an awful lot of lonely years. My father spent his evenings at one theatre or another, in his various directorial positions. Sometimes she acted in his plays but mostly she was the one at home, waiting to hear his car pull up and his key in the lock before she fell deeply asleep, so certain was she that some night, in an alcohol-fueled misstep, he'd drive right into the river and forget how to exit the car. They probably spent a total of 3 waking hours a day in each other's company. But it had the earmarks of a normal long-term marriage, I guess.

My mother's father, my grandfather, was so oblivious to his wife and her needs that he let her die of kidney failure, brought on by her dehydration, due to failing to ingest liquids so she wouldn't have to try to drag her arthritic body up a flight of stairs to the only toilet in the house. So my mom either wasn't expecting much from a husband or wasn't particularly surprised not to get much. Other than a lot of responsibility and not much help.

Me, I think I've been lonely all my life. Except when I was raising kids. Having your own posse really staves off the blues.