Lonely Days, Lonely Nights

In his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton describes the Holy Week he spent in retreat when he first discovered Our Lady of Gethsemane Monastery, the Cisterician community he later joined. He talks about the consecration during the first Mass with the Monks:

“Do you know what Love is? You have never known the meaning of Love, never, you who have always drawn all things to the center of your own nothingness. Here is Love in this chalice full of Blood, Sacrifice, mactation. Do you not know that to love means to be killed for glory of the Beloved? And where is your love? Where is now your Cross, if you say you want to follow Me, if you pretend you love Me?”

A couple pages later he describes the life of the Cistercians (Trappists) and compares it with the Carthusians, “the ones who had gone the farthest, climbed the highest on the mountain of isolation that lifted them above the world and concealed them in God. . . . The Carthusian worked alone, in his cell, in his own garden or workshop, isolated. . . . The Carthusian ate alone, sitting in the window alcove of his cell, with no one to speak to him but God. All day long and all night long the Cistercian was with his brothers. All day long and all night long, except for the offices in choir and other intervals, the Carthusian was with God alone.” The Cistericans held silence and did not hold conversations while the Carthusians were encouraged to go on recreational walks, two-by-two, and to converse in order to break the silence to some degree, perhaps to avoid insanity.

These days I think aloneness is my cross. Sometimes it feels like I spend nearly all my time -- 80 to 90 percent probably -- alone. I eat alone. I work alone. I occasionally am able to have brief conversations with people but these tend to be short: visits before or after Mass, saying hello to neighbors whose comments are usually restricted to telling me how beautiful my dog is. Usually very shallow and short comments. Sometimes I have phone conversations with my sisters or sisters-in-law, the latter being much less frequent. Sometimes my brother drops by for a visit and walk. But on the whole I spend far too much time alone with not enough of value to do in that time. Not working contributes greatly to that alone time. Being a widow also contributes a great deal. People with a spouse and children at home or nearby have no idea how lonely it can be without them. They would probably love a little alone time. I would love a little more “together” time.

So I read. I pray. I talk to my God and I talk to my dog. I check my email in hopes that someone will have sent me something more personal than a forward or junk mail. I listen to the radio and watch the evening news on television.

It is my own fault, undoubtedly. I chose to be alone in spite of having a good man who could have been an ongoing part of my life. I chose to retire from my work which, though it sometimes drove me crazy, also allowed me a great deal of interaction with a wide variety of people. I chose to sell my home, my things, and live in this little moving cell, my motor home. So yes, maybe I’m getting what I asked for. But you often get more than you bargain for in life, or less, and finding a happy medium is nearly impossible.

How many people, in their later years, find themselves exactly where I am? A life full of family and home and work is suddenly gone. The empty hours crawl by while you wait to hear from a loved one, wait to be invited to be with friends who are too busy with their own lives and families to think about your needs? Is this what God has called me to? Why? If God is speaking to me, I cannot seem to hear over the deep silence that my life has become filled with.

Perhaps it will just take more time to adjust to this new life. It’s been barely a year since I retired, but it’s been almost five years since I was widowed, and well over four years since both my children left home. This was clearly not the kind of retirement I expected and looked forward to. So how do I make this life that I now have work? How do I find fulfillment without compromising myself? Is this part of the holy longing that Ronald Rollhesier wrote about? Part of that Augustinian theology that believes our hearts are restless until they rest in God?

All I know for sure is that this life of isolation sometimes feels like it's killing me. And maybe that’s God’s point.

TravelinLady