When a COVID cough has me up all night, and I’m isolating in the attic, where I’ve been in solitude for the past five days, this cradle song – ‘Yurikago No Uta’ – is the only spot of solace or semi-comfort there is to be found. It’s a traditional Japanese lullaby, often sung to babies to help them sleep. Physically, I am feeling better – a slight side-effect has me in the bathroom a bit more than I’d like, but if it means I don’t die from lack of breath, it seems a fair trade-off. Still, I wasn’t expecting the plunge back into social isolation to take such an emotional toll, and I understand it’s the culmination of the weeks and months of this summer, which had me helplessly hoping that the anniversary of Dad’s death might bring about some sense of closure, some somewhat-happier-ending of that dreadful year of firsts, all the while knowing such an arbitrary deadline of grief was a fever-dream. Born out of desperation and survival and coping, it was a wish that I knew in my heart was foolish, but that same heart couldn’t do anything but hope it might prove true. When at least it came and went, and there was no real relief, no erasure of emptiness or loss, it proved a different sort of chill than when it first happened. A lonelier chill. And then I placed my finger on the root cause of the periodic crying spells that have unexpectedly cropped up at the strangest times this past week: loneliness.
Loneliness in the very real sense of being isolated and alone – when I spent my days and nights secluded in the cozy little attic room I made for our home a few years ago – a room that now functioned as bedroom, office, dining room, living room, reading room, lounging room, dressing room, every room – where largely-sleepless nights were only partly drowned out by the hum and occasional rattle of the window air conditioner, where rain would sound almost melodically on the roof right above my head and rather than sour the mood it would give me comfort because it meant maybe the rest of the world would slow and stop while I was gone instead of carrying on in cherry, sun-drenched summer fashion. A selfish notion, but sickness brings out our selfishness, as much for survival as for pettiness.
Here, in this little room, I fitfully try to sleep without any comfort of Andy beside me. Here, I sip on tea and lots of water and take the occasional meal – eating alone without a husband or companion. Here, I study the bouquet of flowers my Mom left on the front porch along with some breakfast rolls and a dessert, touched by her love and care, realizing how much a son still needs his mother, and shocked at how sad this bout of sickness has suddenly made me feel.
What a ludicrous scene I have painted: a man who will turn 49 years old in four days, weeping like a baby and listening to a cradle song, looking at the animals on the cover of the video and remembering his childhood bedroom. Is it sacrilege to wish it away if it meant a lesser sting of missing it? Is it wrong to wish any of our days away?
Well.
The folly of youth.
Or the folly of middle age… assuming this is somewhere near the middle. We never really know, do we?
My therapist told me at our last session that just about everything had aligned for me to have a mid-life crisis at this moment. I looked at her incredulously, my jaw literally dropping, then said perhaps a little testily, “Umm, when I started seeing you four years ago it was because I was having my mid-life crisis, so I thought I already did that.” She laughed a little, and I fear it’s because I thought there would only be one.
“You know,” I continued, “I survived the one and I’d rather not do it again.”
She acknowledged all the work that went into those early months of therapy, and was rather flippant and nonchalant about another one coming, when my quizzical look of concern must have registered, because she then said I shouldn’t worry about it because I was at a place where I could handle it in a healthy manner.
Huh.
That was when I gave myself a rare internal pat on the back.
It’s one thing to pretend I’m strong and great and amazing – quite another to even partly believe it on the inside.
That was a few weeks ago. It already feels very far away. Like those fun first days of summer… like those carefree days of childhood…
