My widowed friend Seth is companion-hunting. Wow, you might think, health, wealth, charm, no problem, walk in the park. This is why God made computers! Only wait, it’s not that easy. While breezy and confident in his career, Seth writhes. I can’t, I won’t, he confesses – I’d sooner die! My gut crimps listening. Without Jane, I think, I’d go live in a cave. No, I wouldn’t shoot myself – life is too precious – but for sure I’d bar the door. 

                  The more fiercely one has loved, the more one longs to, the more one may recoil from matchmaking. Yet how long, arid, wrenching seems our trek to death alone. Why live, if not for another! Yet how love another having loved so well!

                  My fingers tremble typing these paragraphs. I want to wake Jane to hug her. A pox on Seth for having introduced this topic! I too can’t, won’t. Let my plane crash! And yet…

                  Loneliness is among modernity’s plagues. Generations ago, neighbors made a place for all human conditions. Now we live cocooned in our conveniences. Retirement communities, if one can afford them, open their arms with their mandatory cheer. They may be my best choice if that time comes, but it seems hard. Jane and I, in health, each insists we’re “going first,” knowing that’s not our call. One of us will have to cope.

                  My insistent theme – here and in seclusion – is mind over matter. “Nothing’s either good or bad but thinking makes it so” – so think your way to Hallelujah. Only this matter feels a Matterhorn to my mind, unscalable. Maybe if I look away, I’ll get lucky. Only that defeats my mission, which is to face my facts. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto – being human, nothing human is alien to me – so man up, Carll.

                  Here’s where self-inspection comes in handy. Much as I dread surviving Jane, if that’s my doom, I’m curious to see how it goes. Will I fall apart? Make the best of things? Manage “a fresh start”? Will I impress or disgrace myself? Go wild or mild? Whatever happens will be revelatory, evidence to learn from.

                  The story of my life has shielded me from my life. The only times I contemplated exiting life were when, muzzled by depression, I couldn’t tell my story. I live to tell the tale. Art as talking cure.

                  Seth resists my cheery suggestion almost angrily. He is not a writer, he reminds me, his life is not a soap opera. He’s stuck being himself, not some doppelganger taking notes from the sidelines. I will never understand!

                  He’s right: I can’t conceive of being only one. The mystery of me makes being an adventure whatever happens. Everything I do is what a person does. My words are what someone might write, q.e.d. When I botch things, that’s what humans do. If I please myself, who doesn’t from time to time?

                  Envisioning alternatives strengthens us to meet them. Actuality, I see now, spooked my parents because they refused to explore it. Either things were comme il faut, as they should be, or all hell was breaking loose, their world was falling apart. Their kids’ divergence made them angry, not proud. They could only be themselves and when that proved disappointing, they had nowhere to flee.

                  My conversation with Seth unsettled me. So I told you about it. Telling you about it made it a tale to tell, commonplace, almost comic. Yes, I will writhe if left alone, but as long as I have my pen I will not be penned. You rescue me.