THE ORDINARINESS OF LONELINESS

 

“I brush my teeth, I put the cap back on.

I know you hate it when I leave the light on.

I pick a book up and I turn the sheets down,

And take a deep breath and a good look around.

Put on my pj's and hop into bed,

I’m half alive, but I feel mostly dead.

I try to tell myself it’ll be alright,

I shouldn’t think anymore tonight . . .”

Jewell

That song by Jewell no longer provokes the profuse tears and choking sobs that it did just over a year ago. But it still makes my lips tighten and my eyes moisten. Although the song is about a failed romance, the words strike deep into the heart of a widowed person. It’s the ordinariness of everyday life that constantly reminds a widower that he is alone.

I have never gotten “used to” being alone. It’s an unnatural state for a man. God said so. “It is not good that the man should be alone.” It was God Himself who brought the woman to the man. In my case, God has mercifully given me some relief in the form of video chats with someone who has grown to love me. But as yet God has not brought her to me. In this strange new virtual world, she and I can fold clothes together on video and almost feel like we’re in the same room. But we are not. And when the chat ends, as it must each morning and each evening, the ordinariness of loneliness returns. Unlike Jewel, however, I don’t “hop" into bed; I sadly roll under the sheets and try to imagine that this solitariness will not last too much longer.

It’s that hope that love will again inhabit my house and make it a home that keeps me going and reasonably sane. And that hope is based on my faith that God did not bring that special woman into my life from across the ocean for no reason.