Alone

I was alone. My parents told me they were going to a movie, that grey, cold, dismal Sunday afternoon in February. I was ten years old, without brothers or sisters, and on that particular day without friends or companions. I'd given up my dog after he dug such a hole under Mrs. Figge's front porch that the house almost slid into it. I was free to wander on my bicycle, and eventually came to the bridge over Turtle Creek where a large crowd and emergency vehicles had congregated. I got off my bike to watch also, as a large crane lifted a dark blue, 1932 Chevrolet from the creek by its back bumper, high in the air where it swung back and forth.Then the cold hand of fear reached in and clutched my heart. My folks had left home in a dark blue 1932 Chevrolet, and to my distress I saw that aluminum paint had been used to cover the rear bumpers, just as with my parent's car.

I had no one to talk to, no one to reassure me that this was just a coincidence. Then I thought of going to the police station to obtain the details of the accident. I rode my bike up State Street to the building where the police had their offices. Leaning my bike against the store front I walked up the long, dark stairway to the landing where an officer sat behind a glass window. He was large, old and in a lousy mood as he rudely answered my question, saying that the accident had occurred that Sunday morning at 2:30 a.m. Depressed and still not reassured I went back to my bike, rode back to the scene of the accident, unable to free myself from the conviction that my parents had died. The thought occurred to me that the officer had made a mistake,that the accident had happened at 2:30 in the afternoon. So it was with fear and trepidation that I revisited the police station, walking up those dark stairs to again question the officer. He wouldn't even talk to me this time, angrily telling me to leave the premises. It was with a heavy heart that I rode back to my house, still wondering what I could do.

Billy Lundberg was my best friend and I rang the bell at the front door of his house. His Dad came to the door, and told me to just go home, as though my story confirmed his suspicion that my father and mother were not proper parents and there was nothing he was going to do to remedy that situation.

As the darkness deepened I sat silently, alone in the house.

Many years later my wife and I saw a play in which a coffin leaned against a stand in the midst of a large family gathering. From time to time one of the players would enter the coffin, closing the door behind him, remaining there for some extended period before rejoining the family. The symbolism spoke to me, reminding me of the many times I had experienced the pain of feeling alone, forgotten in the midst of a social occasion, as though I had died and no one cared, no one even noticed that I no longer existed. To be alone in this way can be an experience of death.

All of my life I've been striving to be somebody, a person who cannot be ignored, overlooked, forgotten. I've toiled in so many ways to be popular, to be successful, to be admired, to be heard. This, I have believed, is to be alive. What other purpose could there be for life?
But now in my old age I strive to be nobody. Without regrets for the life I have lived I toil to be unnoticed, to free myself from the habitual longing to be a star, to be noticed, to be important. I work now to learn how to be anonymous in good works, to be of service without any form of reward.

One need not be lonely, even though alone. There is a solitude that brings a deeper understanding of life. Meditation is the most extreme form of being alone, for in meditation we seek to disregard even our own thoughts. In meditation we burrow deeply into the darkness, seeking to be free from our most basic desires.

In the Hindu culture there are stages of life, a time to learn, a time to be responsible as a householder, and retirement, a time to discover the meaning of one's existence.

My parents finally returned that Sunday evening, apologetic for the sorrow they had caused me, but with the reasonable explanation that the first movie was full so they had watched the second show. But I can still remember the loneliness of that experience.