Of Old Men and Loneliness
The old man, his bag of seeds and me. We are back again today. We sit on the same bench each day after our morning stroll. He walks on crutches. I jog. We never exchange a word to each other. He’s become my best friend.
“Used to come here with my wife,” he says in a gruff voice.
He may as well be speaking to himself. Some part of my brain responsible for reception of audible senses moves like a rusty, old radio trying to find the right signals. He can not form his words coherently. I can not hear even if I try. I nod along to nothingness.
The pigeons flock around us. I notice as the old man recalls another memory.
“…she was always telling me to feed them. She cared too much about animals and all. And about me. I just…” his voice cracks and his eyes get glassy with tears.
I have nothing to say. The cogs in my mind are working to produce an emotion. Sympathy perhaps. Compassion even.
No, it’s none of that, I think to myself and stare ahead.
Loving and losing. Brief moments of connection then a prolonged void. That’s what life is. I have aged beyond my years. The conception of another joy in life seems futile and even tiresome. I am only slightly irritable and somewhat melancholic over my losses and the lack of constancy in life. I am no more than an old man myself. Pitying him will be pitying myself.
“Many things you can’t say when you’re alive,” he blows his nose loudly, “I didn’t know how to tell her. I was just comfortable when she was there…”
“But life abruptly snatched that comfort away. As it does,” I interject, staring at a pigeon mother feeding its child.
“It wasn’t abrupt. I always knew it was coming anyway. I didn’t fear her absence until retirement. Now I have nothing to do and she’s not here.”
I think it’s strange. We work all lives until we’re old and lonely and just waiting to die. Discussing the evils of global capitalism may not be up the old man’s alley. I feel a tingling sensation in my legs. A discomfort telling me to go. To run as far away as possible. I stand up awkwardly.
The first time the old man ever opens up, perhaps a courteous goodbye will do. I say nothing but walk with dangling legs a few steps ahead until I’m out of his sight which due to old age doesn’t go that far.
Then I start jogging. My thoughts taking turns in racing with me.
What’s the point of a new friend that will die soon anyway?
I nod to myself. I’ll never come to this park again. I’ll jog somewhere else. God forbid, I have no intention of opening my heart to another human again. Specially not a diseased and old one.
I come back home and take a moment to hope something cures him of his loneliness. I vow to myself to never go jogging there again.
