SADNESS COMES FROM THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES

photo credit B.K.

Sometimes when we imagine what will trigger great sadness, that possibility is never what actually happens that brings despondency. So my unhappiness now needs to be sorted out because the simple loss of the sound of familiar footsteps and my reaction to that has stunned me. 

I suppose this may be something that only other people who live alone will even understand... because we are a strange group of bizarre dwellers. I would think that to those who are married, to those who raised children and have grandchildren and have large families, or mostly to young people this will be something that will be eyeball roll worthy or a piece to even ridicule. And that is why I hesitated to even write this... thinking it would be considered trivial within so many of the greater losses of others. 

But, there may be a few who will read this and get it, and it is that group that I always label as having the soul of a poet. 

I live alone, but never feel lonely. I can surround myself with others all the time. Within my small space, there are sounds that have become familiar as I sit in my back apartment: the song of the mourning dove, the unexpected howl of the wind as it hits the fire escape, and the patter of the footsteps above me that have been the same footsteps for over fifty years. 

The walls are so thin here and the floors so weak, I could hear my neighbor (who lives upstairs) as she rocked back and forth in her chair and I would awaken late at night when she got out of bed to walk to the bathroom. I grumbled when she dropped so many things and for years her dog scampered around on the uncarpeted floor as he chased whatever toy she threw his way. 

The years pass quickly and somehow I never think anything in my confined world will change. There have been big changes but the small things remain the same.  The consistency of the minutiae keeps me grounded as I age. 

But sometimes a situation happens and fills me with unexpected sadness. Mary is moving away. Mary, who moved in to live above me in 1970; Mary, whose footsteps strangely comforted me through decades... is going back to her home town. That made me cry. I never would have thought that the anticipation of total silence above me would effect me this way and while I know it is temporary, it's the particular specific sounds I will miss. It's going to be weird for a while having nobody up there and hearing no movement. It's an undefined feeling of emptiness that comes from sentiment that many might consider so meaningless. 

My strange intense reaction was unexpected and the melancholy remains with me... perhaps this will only even be understood by those who live internally and who capture memories in time like little dandelions that wait for the parts to unexpectedly be blown away. 

One by one, those who lived here have fallen away. I remain... among just a few who have also passed through these decades with me and aged beside me. 

Yes, sadness does come from unexpected places. And it is unpredictable. But I feel an emptiness and a longing for the familiar small sounds that once were above me. 

And as Gabriel did in THE DEAD, I pondered this "riot of emotions." "And me, transient as they, flickering out as well into their grey world, like everything around me this solid world itself which they lived and reared in is dwindling and dissolving..." 

--- James Joyce, THE DEAD

Snow is not falling, this reaction has happened during the bright heat of summer. And I long for winter. 

--- Marjorie J. Levine