The Ghost of Loneliness Past

Pulling into the parking lot, I spot a deep purple wine-colored Mazda car. The same car my mother had. Her presence or lack thereof is everywhere and my loneliness is quick to surface. Ever since the day she passed, I’ve pushed down loneliness and numbed it through eating, reading, and endless scrolling. I’ve never given my loneliness a voice. Until now.

The movie theater is desolate. There’s nobody here. Granted it is a Wednesday afternoon but still, I wonder if people ever go to see movies at a theater anymore. The emptiness, the scarcity of people only magnifies my solitude. And sure enough, when I look at the seat next to mine, it’s no longer my mother sitting next to me, it’s the ghost of loneliness past. When the previews come on, I do what I’ve conditioned myself to do. I turn away to distract myself with the screen in front of me and try my darnedest to forget.

Michigan is cold. I’ve forgotten just how frigid the winters can be with below freezing temperatures and icy wind. It permeates every pore of my being and takes permanent residence in my bones until spring which doesn’t come until late May if we’re lucky.

My mother’s old bedroom is cold too. It’s like my dad hasn’t set foot in there or even opened the door once in the 5 years since she’s passed. I don’t blame him. Her absence is starkly present. To even go near the room where she once slept, meditated, read, and breathed life is asking to face grief head-on. And isn’t it easier at least for the first little while to sweep grief under the rug with everything else, busy oneself with other things, and just go on living? As I’ve learned, it is until it’s not.

For me, loneliness presents itself in many moments throughout my day. During my week in Michigan, it follows me around like a shadow. It reminds me that my mom is no longer here sitting on the couch next to me unwinding with episodes of The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert or reruns of FRIENDS. When I fall asleep at night, she’s not in the next room only a door away, and I don’t hear her get up at night to use the restroom. When I knock on her bedroom door, she isn’t there to say good morning. I don’t get phone calls from her anymore telling me she’s on her way home from work or inquiring whether she should pick up something for dinner.

Loneliness sits at the counter as I dance around the kitchen cooking a meal for myself then joins me at the dinner table when I finally sit down to eat. It’s the almost irrevocable vow of silence from all the words I leave unsaid about how my day was or how things are going. Sitting quietly, I wish that my mom was still around to talk to instead.

Even to this day, loneliness often stands right across from me staring me in the face when someone asks if I’m ok. When I respond with “I’m fine,” it taps me on the shoulder and says “‘atta girl!” Loneliness is a product of rejecting my real emotions and thereby doing a disservice to living and speaking my truth. It’s the tears in my eyes when I see other women my age out having lunch with their moms. It’s knowing that my mother will not be alive on this Earth to see me get married if that day ever comes. It’s the devil on my shoulder that tells me to give a snarky or hurtful remark in response to anyone who says I don’t need to be sad because my mother lives on in my memory.

Loneliness even had the nerve to follow me all the way to Japan. It was a loyal companion the whole time I was there. It sat next to me on the trains in Tokyo. It formed a lump in my throat when people asked me why I had moved to Japan, and I often had to override my real response. Part of the reason I came was to learn about my father’s ancestry, but really I was just running away from the grief.

Every night when I got home from work, loneliness was always diligently waiting to remind me that I couldn’t call home to mom when things got tough. And what a shame because she always knew just what to say to talk me down from a ledge. Rather than acknowledging loneliness, I switched on the television just to have some background noise and make it feel like I had company in my tiny studio apartment. I watched Youtube videos on my phone while I ate my meals and listened to podcasts as I fell asleep so I wouldn’t succumb to the silence that would remind me that I was alone.

When my ex-boyfriend came around, my loneliness subsided though just briefly. Unknowingly, a part of me came to rely on him to take it away completely. For a short while, he was someone I could check in with every day to say I’m thinking of you. I looked forward to spending time together on the weekends, meeting up for dinner after work during the week, or watching TV in bed together on Sunday morning. Then one cold night in February, loneliness returned like the Grim Reaper wedging its way back into my life unwelcome. On our last night together, I lied in bed next to this man I loved even if only for a short time with my arms wrapped around his torso. I forced myself to stay awake through the night to try and memorize every curve of his body and soak up the warmth of cuddling up next to him knowing this would be the last time I ever would.

I hunger for that unconditional love and sense of security that my mother provided me for 26 years. But searching for a replacement in other people is futile and unfair. The effort is always in vain because there isn’t anyone else who can live up to everything she was to me.

Loneliness is the increasingly painful longing for my mother as the years go by. No matter how many photos I look at or how many times I watch the video she left behind for me, I slowly start to forget what she looked like or what her voice sounded like. It seems that loneliness has made it easier to forget than to remember.

Loneliness has reclaimed a permanent stake in my life and so has anger and unshakeable grief. Grief is piled high from words left unsaid or emotions left unexpressed between me and my dad about my mom’s passing. We don’t talk about it ever. Emotional expression and emotional intelligence are foreign concepts to my father. He doesn’t have a way with words like my mother did or like I do. And when I begin to share bits of my life, stories, or memories with my dad, he simply nods then turns the conversation spotlight back on him or another trivial matter leaving me to retreat inwards on myself.

I understand that, deep down, he just doesn’t know what to say or how to communicate well with me or anyone. He is hurting, lonely, and ashamed too. So much so that talking about it may be too much to bare than continuing to numb. But my loneliness and frustration are quick to turn to anger and impatience at his unwillingness to seek or ask for help on his own and apathy towards wanting to help him if he is not willing to first help himself. My own grief and loneliness are heavy enough to lug around with me each day as it is. I cannot and will not carry his too for I will truly crumble.

With all of that said, I feel like such a loser because it has been 5 years and it is still not any easier to live without her. Especially given that my father isn’t a significant presence in my life, I feel like an adult orphan. What’s even more debilitating is knowing that nobody will ever truly comprehend the pain of losing my mom not even my closest family members. Because individual relationships and bonds are unique, and from the outside, it can only be witnessed or judged, not experienced.

After all this time, loneliness still lies in bed with me at night indulging that small sliver of hope that I’ll hear the garage door open and my mother’s car pull into the driveway. It’s this unwavering desire for all of this to just be a bad dream.

I don’t know what I was expecting coming back here. To this house that I now refer to as my father’s house. The house feels distant from warm memories, inhospitable, and lonely. The love and the glue that held my family together is gone, and even after five years, I still can’t believe it’s true. Yet nothing has changed. My father and grandmother still have the same habits and the same way of talking to each other. They have not dealt with their grief. It still festers inside, and I honestly don’t know how it hasn’t eaten them alive to the point of death because some days mine feels like it might. And just when I thought I was making progress in therapy or through talking to other family members, I’ve come to realize that maybe I haven’t. Every time grief spirals back around, the wound still feels fresh, and I start to wonder how it is that I too am still alive.

We’re all going to end at the same finish line but how and when we get there will differ. Loneliness is the longest and most isolating path. That’s not the road I want to take so it’s time to change direction.

Thank you for listening.