Alone

There are some in this world who are truly alone. The homeless, mentally ill, addicted, abused, homebound, and others afflicted with modern society’s maladies who suffer in ways that most of us will hopefully never experience. Nevertheless, I believe that most of us are not alone. There are others in our lives that care for us, although to varying degrees. At the worse, we can always go to the coffee shop or bar and strike up a conversation with a total stranger. Of course, we may go through periods where we feel lonely but typically it is only the ebbs and flows of what we call life. What does not kill us makes us stronger, so Nietzsche argues. Damn stoics!

There is a different kind of alone that currently afflicts me though. My sister and I recently lost our mother. Not an unexpected event and quite frankly welcomed as my mother’s memories evaporated and she withered away. Nevertheless, it is an epochal event in our life trajectories. My mother’s passing followed my fathers of several years ago. I am now in foreign waters where return to the home port is no longer an option. Not that I relied on may parents in any way or ever anticipated literally returning home. Those days are long past. Nevertheless, parents are our connections to the past, which gives us a psychological connection to who we are. That connection is now severed. The journey no longer harkens me to look backwards, rather propels me to hasten my pace forward.

I am not a member of the truly alone, but I cannot help but feel hollow and lonely following my mother’s passing. With these feelings ever present, the hard work of charting my life’s course must proceed with greater alacrity. Will the headwinds strengthen, or will I be assisted by a warm following breeze and the soft encouragement of my mother’s soul? I can only hope for the later for there is no alternative other than tie up and rot in place. These are the inevitable events in life and how we navigate them defines the legacies that we leave behind. How we learn and grow from these events defines whether we will ultimately arrive in our new, home port. So, the journey continues.