Lost Weekends

"So, what are you doing this weekend?"

It's the most common question you hear on a Friday, especially the one before a holiday. What was your answer? Hosting visiting relatives? Taking a trip to see distant loved ones? Perhaps you were invited to several parties or get-togethers and are having trouble negotiating them so that no one is offended?

You are lucky.

My mom died ten weeks ago, age 78. My dad died thirteen years before her. I have only one brother, and he is a severe alcoholic who is far too wrapped up in himself to bring me any holiday joy. My dad's family, his parents, four brothers and two sisters, are all gone now. On my mom's side, one brother has died and she has one surviving sister. There are several cousins on my dad's side, but they are much older than me and I only have any real relationship with two or three. There are very few cousins on my mom's side. I have one niece and one nephew, both of whom live several states away.

I am single, no kids.

So when it comes to holidays, I more or less dread the question. Certainly I love the extra time off of work, and like everyone else I have friends. But as much as modern society would love us to believe that friends can take the place of family, when the rubber hits the road most of those friends have family that are going to (understandably) take precedence over me. It's just the way life works.

There is really no one to be upset with, because there's no one who isn't doing something they are supposed to. One can argue that I should get married, I guess, but that's a separate issue. There are lots of good reasons to get married, but one of them isn't so you won't be alone on holidays, or at all. And maybe I will, someday. Who knows? I can only talk about what's going on right now.

So, what do you do?

You check your email. A lot. Your check your messages, often. And you hope like hell there's something there every time, though a lot of times there isn't. It's hard. You get mad because no one is contacting you, but you have to keep in mind that there are other things on your friends' mind than you, that they have greater priorities than keeping you from feeling lonely.

I work full time and I do some volunteer work too. It helps to get out, see other people, occupy your time. But even when you do, there is always that feeling of "separateness" as everyone is aware but never talks about the fact that you aren't with anyone. Weekends are hard, and holidays, long weekends, are worse. You know that there are people that feel sorry for you, but you don't want to be included solely on that basis. Yet at the same time, a part of you wouldn't mind. You don't know for sure how you want people to treat you. I have a few friends, good friends, and I know that sometimes they don't know how to approach this new situation either, how to balance their concern for me and the need for boundaries. You watch the clock and wonder if anyone else out there is kind of anxious for the weekend to end and for work to start again. Then you secretly curse yourself for thinking something so unthinkable.

Yet there it is. You want to get angry with all your deceased loved ones, but that doesn't make any sense either, since they didn't want to leave you. It's just life and it's just happening and that's the hard part. There's nothing to bump up against, nothing to fight.

Unless what you need to fight is yourself. Maybe you need to fight the lethargy that comes with self-pity, the feeling of "poor little me" that you hate to acknowledge but can't help but feel. The resentment that you have been cast out alone in the world and the notion that there's no one else to blame but yourself for hiding yourself away and wanting people to come to you when what you should be doing is making yourself available to them. Some may take it as "neediness". Well, if they do, they do. March on. Don't wall yourself up. Live in the world you've got, not the one that you wish it was.

I hope that I can take my own advice. I've got a lot of life left, hopefully, and the prospect of trudging through it by myself is tremendously daunting. While I don't expect special treatment and realize that there are millions of people (in hospitals, prisons, institutions of other kinds) who are a lot more alone than I am, I do want to encourage everyone who still has family to cherish them, tell them how important they are. The truth is, they (and you) won't be here forever, and in the short, sweet time we all have together it's important to acknowledge them. It won't make the long weekends any shorter, but it will blunt the terrible ache of their absence and make it easier to join the world again.