II—THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING LONELY

There is a power in loneliness, a purity, self-immersion, and depth which is unlike any other experience. Being lonely is such a total, direct, vivid existence, so deeply felt, so startlingly different, that there is no room for any other perception, feeling, or awareness. Loneliness is an organic experience which points to nothing else, is for no other purpose and results in nothing but the realization of itself. Loneliness is not homelessness. There is no departure or exile, the person is fully there, as fully as he ever can be.

Loneliness involves a unique substance of self, a dimension of human life which taps the full resources of the individual. It calls for strength, endurance, and sustenance, enabling a person to reach previously unknown depths and to realize a certain nakedness of inner life.

Being lonely is a reality of far-reaching social consequence, yet it is distinctly a private matter. It is an experience of raw sensitivity. It is so entirely pure and complete that there is no room for anything else or anyone else. Feelings of loneliness take root deeply and unfold in varied directions. Being lonely involves a certain pathway, requires a total submersion of self, a letting be of all that is and belongs, a staying or remaining with the situation, until a natural realization or completion is reached; when a lonely existence completes itself, the individual becomes, grows from it, reaches out for others in a deeper, more vital sense.

1.{1}

Elizabeth was and never ceases to be. Her whole life consisted of being. We, who knew her intimately became infinitely richer in love and understanding because of her being. She gave with no thought of giving, she loved with no thought of being loved, and she received and created love because she was lovable.

We, her parents, her sister of nine, and her brother of six, had waited for her arrival with joy. We prepared for her with loving thoughts and plans, with shopping and sewing and sharing. She began to be and we were happy.

We wanted her to be born at home and the doctor consented. The night of her arrival came and she was born attended by the family doctor, her grandmother, her loving aunt, her father, and, of course, me, her mother. The joyful cry of a new-born baby filled the room and then I heard that moment of such quiet silence. Something strange was happening and I was filled with the fear of impending disaster. A baby girl was born, but the doctor, there in that room which was suddenly filled with the anxiety of vitally concerned persons, had to say to all of us that Elizabeth, our baby, through some unforeseen, unpredictable, unknown reason, had failed to develop properly. One of the lower vertebrae had not grown together. This allowed the spinal fluid to escape and form a cyst near the end of her spinal column. Her body was paralyzed below this vertebra, and one foot, especially, had not developed in a normal fashion. However, Elizabeth was, and, being herself as she was at that moment, she created a deep feeling of reverence for life which bound us all together in that moment of shock and despair which none of us shall forget. The lesion was so severe that the doctor felt that Elizabeth should be in a hospital. He was a brave man, with a strength and depth of feeling which I had never suspected, as he had often seemed rather brusk and hurried and unfeeling. But this night he could tell us that we could not expect our baby to live but a very few days, that her condition was so serious it could not be treated by medicine or by operation. Perhaps because he had the courage to be honest and because he expected us to have the strength to face our suffering, we were able to do this, at least partially.

Her grandmother and her Aunt Emma bathed and dressed Elizabeth. She was a beautiful baby with soft brown hair and a little round face. Margaret and Paul were gently awakened and came in so happily to see the new baby. But so soon we had to tell them that she was not well and must go to the hospital where they had better facilities for taking care of her. They each held her for a few moments and kissed her goodbye. I felt that my very heart would break.

For three days I was numb with grief and shock, with disbelief and pain. I thought I would turn my face to the wall until it was all over and maybe I would never need to look straight into the face of my grief and disappointment. We wanted her, loved her, and longed to keep her. Then that feeling of shame and mortification crept in. We, Clarence and I, had a child that was deformed, was not normal, could we face our relatives and our friends now? What had we done to deserve this kind of punishment? If we had done wrong why should Elizabeth be the one to pay for it? I searched my soul for the meaning of life and for the meaning of Elizabeth’s being.

Three days went by, the allotted time the doctor had given her to live, and Elizabeth was. The nurses and specialists at the hospital wondered at her fragile yet tenacious hold on life. A week passed by, and two weeks. Elizabeth was and would not be denied. The doctor said we could have her at home. He felt that we could care for her if they taught me how to keep the cyst covered with Vaseline and gauze. But he said we could not expect her to live even from one day to the next. Her death might occur rather suddenly at any time.

I had had two weeks to wrestle with myself. I had had many well-wishing visitors who either talked too much, or were tongue-tied through embarrassment and indecision. I experienced many new thoughts and new feelings during these days. I found the meaning of living one moment at a time. I could only live one moment at a time for I didn’t have the strength to endure more than one moment. I found I could not plan before time what I would say to this person or that person. I could only say what was to be said at the moment when it arrived. I found myself raw with sensitivity to the feelings and embarrassments of my guests and I found a deeper, softer bond between the four of us at home, waiting for Elizabeth to join us. But perhaps more than all of these I found that the length of the life span or the conditions of a person’s body do not detract from the meaning and value of being. I could accept Elizabeth without apology to anyone.

We went together to bring her home. This was a moment of joy and sadness. We were together but there were many things we were unable to do for Elizabeth because of her fragile condition. We could not hold her or cuddle her because it was painful for her to be moved. She could be comfortable only on either one side or the other on a firm pillow. We could be close to her, hold her hand, and sing to her, but we couldn’t cuddle and comfort her when she cried.

At this time I had another difficult decision to make. I was tempted to bathe and dress the baby before the children awakened in the morning. But bathing the baby was one thing Margaret and Paul had been anticipating for a long time. Now, Elizabeth was a perfectly beautiful, normal baby above the defective vertebra, and guests would remark about what a pretty healthy baby she was, unless they were aware of her difficulty. So should I try to bathe her and dress her alone to protect the other children from the pain of realizing Elizabeth’s real physical condition? They were so eager to be with the baby and to help with everything that I decided I must be honest and we must all live through this experience together. The impact of this experience for me is inexpressible. The children were so happy to do something for Elizabeth. They thought her little foot was so delicate and beautiful. Bath time became a meaningful experience every day in which we each had a part. For a while Elizabeth cried when we gave her a bath and I was afraid it was a painful, physical ordeal for her. But I found her looking at my face and saw that I had an anxious tense expression. I started to smile and we sometimes sang softly or hummed a little during the bath and Elizabeth responded by being happy and not crying.

She lived day after day and because we knew we could not expect to keep her we found joy in each moment that we did have her. In this way I found that this was the way that I wanted to live all of the time—each moment to the extent of its possibilities. I learned that, although I could make plans and anticipate the future, life is demanding and unpredictable. In order to live I must be sensitive to these demands and be flexible enough to experience them. We, as a family, found joy and an increase of love, acceptance and understanding.

Five months went by and Elizabeth, even through the reality of her pain and immobility, remained loving, giving, and beautiful by being herself. She looked at me with her big brown eyes, which seemed like deep pools of liquid pain, and she talked with me with wisdom and understanding almost beyond my comprehension.

The doctors and nurses and other people wondered and were amazed that she continued to live. Elizabeth, by being, seemed to release the love of all the persons who knew her and this releasing of love seemed to spread throughout her family, which included grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Love spread to the neighbors, to friends, to persons in other communities and other states. People who met her were not moved by pity but seemed to become filled with a gentleness and sensitivity. It seemed that Elizabeth was suspended in a rich atmosphere of love which sustained her and permitted us to keep her with us beyond even our expectations.

Then the night came; Clarence and I had always taken turns watching her through the long nights, but this night we watched together as her breathing became slower and slower until it seemed she would not breathe again. We held her hands because she seemed to feel comforted by this and because we wanted to hold her hands. The night wore on and at almost dawn for some strange reason Clarence and I both went to sleep for a very few minutes, and then awakened very quickly with a sharpness and clarity of mind and soul. Elizabeth was still and the eastern sky was filled with light as the sun burst forth in the glory of the sunrise. And Margaret and Paul with their playmates picked yellow roses and gave them to Elizabeth.

2.

No one understood. No one cared enough to let him live his life his way, and he was not strong enough, not courageous enough, to stand alone. Suffering with tuberculosis, he wanted a program of home treatment, but he was unsuccessful in finding a physician who would care for him. He could not find anyone with whom to share his shattering illness. In the end, his wife and father withdrew their support and told him he had no choice but to enter an institution. The final blow came in the form of a court order instigated by the city health department to force him into a hospital.

Bill Downs was completely alone then. He felt his life slipping away. He tried to tell his family he was losing control. Unable to think clearly or talk decisively, he spoke in a confused and desultory manner, in dejected tones. He felt isolated and doomed and on the verge of being destroyed. His inner life was gone. There was nothing left for him but a meaningless existence. He tried in every way to find a way but he felt utterly rejected. He knew with dreaded clarity he would be compelled to enter a sanitarium where there could only be loneliness without relief, days without sunshine and trees and fresh air, nights without the wind and stars and moon, and a life without freedom and joy and love.

After many sleepless nights, one gloomy dawn, he arose and without a word, left the house, driving his car to the hospital. He was inducted in a mechanical way, and placed in a small room with four other men. He was told that hospital rules were precise, that he would be put on a strict regime, and would be expected to remain in bed at all times as immobile as possible. Bill noticed his roommates for the first time. He learned that they all spoke only in a foreign language. He would not be able to talk with them. They lay there silent, listless, and severely emaciated. As Bill watched them, the numbness suddenly disappeared. He was seized with a feeling of helpless fear, a feeling so strong that it twisted and turned everywhere in his body. He felt completely removed from the world, utterly alone. He lay back on the pillow overcome with terrifying thoughts. Several hours passed; a tray of food was brought to him. It was tasteless and cold. Tears rolled down his face as he remembered the personal value and significance of his meals at home. His wife created meals with love to serve his heart as well as his appetite. The food before him was ugly, intended only to satiate hunger. He could not eat. He choked as he tried. Food mattered to him only within a shared experience. He felt empty, nauseated. Sharp fear hit him again. His mind whirled. He felt terrifying panic. He knew he would die if he stayed in the sanitarium. The urge to live welled strong in him again. There was only one way. He had to leave, to run, anywhere. He threw on his clothes and ran wildly out of the hospital.

The drive home was a nightmare. The anxiety was so strong he was totally unaware of what he was doing, where he was going. Tears streamed down his face. He struggled with choking sensations and feelings of agony. The whole world seemed against him but he would not quit. He would not die without a fight.

Somehow he reached his home and collapsed on the couch. When his wife saw him her mind blurred and dizzily she knelt beside him. She put her arms around him. In the torrent of misery, time passed and the intense painful feelings of loneliness and isolation subsided again to a state of numbness.

They were together again. This time in hopelessness. Their courage, faith, and conviction had disappeared long ago. But they were reunited. Hurriedly, Mrs. Downs packed their suitcases. She felt that time was precious. She had to hurry. She knew they would have to keep running. She had to stay alive, keep them going. She felt she had failed her husband once. Without knowing it, she had joined the forces against him. She knew she had to help in restoring his faith, not realizing she had lost her own, not knowing she could not strengthen him because she too was friendless, and weak, and alone.

Somehow they left the house to say goodbye to their son and Mr. Downs’ father. As they saw these treasured faces, the disintegrating anxiety and loneliness overcame them again. This time they collapsed in separate parts of the house. Frightening feelings shook them completely, subsided momentarily and returned. There was no way to talk to them, to give them hope and renew their courage or to convey human sympathy in any way. The scene severely disturbed the elder Mr. Downs. Little Roger was deeply troubled too. He only partly understood the meaning of his parents’ utter misery. At first father and son tried to talk to the parents, but Mr. and Mrs. Downs could no longer hear any human voice. They were experiencing the most crushing feeling of isolation and worthlessness they had ever known, an experience so complete no other perception was possible. In time grandfather and grandson felt the futility of their efforts and went to another part of the house to sit and wait in silent tears.

Then the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Gans from the health department. She brought the family back to fearful reality and the urgency of flight. She threatened the senior Mr. Downs, quietly and politely, “If you do not see that your son returns to the sanitarium by morning I will issue a warrant for the police department to pick him up and take him forcibly.” Mr. Downs could not talk. He replaced the receiver, rested for a moment, then approached his children to tell them they must hurry.

Mr. and Mrs. Downs somehow mustered enough strength to get into their car and drive toward a distant spot. After driving a short while, the shocking truth that inner peace and unity were gone, that their family was broken, struck them so sharply with a flood of frightened feeling, they had to stop to rest and recover enough energy to go ahead.

A few days later a policeman called the senior Mr. Downs. He gave his first name and indicated he was a friend of Mr. Downs. He wanted to locate him. Mr. Downs asked, “What do you want him for?” The officer stated calmly, “We have a warrant for his arrest and I want to pick him up.” Mr. Downs replied, “I have no idea where he is but I can assure you he is out of the state.” The officer continued, “We have to be absolutely sure about it. I did not want to cause him any embarrassment or anything, but I thought maybe if I were the one who picked him up, it would be easier for him to come along.”

Local policemen contacted friends and neighbors of the family to locate Mr. Downs. The story they told was always the same. They were looking for Bill Downs because he had a severe, contagious illness which could easily infect others. One policeman was especially violent in his objection to home treatments. He protested to the neighbors that he would not want a tubercular patient living next door to him. “Just think,” he said, “every morning you’d wake up. The milkman would pick up his empty bottles and the next day he’d bring the filled bottles back to your house. You’d be drinking out of the same bottles that he used the day before, maybe infecting yourself and your children.”

Gradually the neighbors in immediate proximity erected barriers to separate their property from the Downs’, as though even the house and the land were afflicted. They told the senior Mr. Downs they would not want Bill or his family back in the neighborhood until his illness was completely arrested.

In time, the Downs’ personal belongings and furniture were stored among many relatives in different parts of the state. Their home was sold. There was nothing left to remind neighbors or health and police officials that a diseased family had once lived within their boundaries and endangered community living. But at the same time, there was nothing left of meaning and value in the health department, or in neighborliness; for in the process of destroying the Downs family and forcing them into a lonely and estranged existence, communal humanity and the commandment of “Love thy neighbor” were broken too.

3.

What was most painful for me about my mother’s dying of cancer in a city hospital was the feeling of not knowing if, in her dying moments and days, she knew I was there with her, trying to talk with her, comfort her, and love her. For two years she had fought the cancer, trying to become healthy again, making visits to the clinic—all the time becoming physically weaker, thinner, and more jaundiced. Slowly the cancer created a barrier between her and her family, between life and health, arousing feelings of anxiety, concern, and helplessness in all of us. She kept her pain and torment to herself, trying to be herself and make a life, trying to hold off impending death.

I arrived at the city hospital, where my mother lay dying, at one-thirty A.M., two days before the Fourth of July. I was taken to her ward room which was also occupied by five other women. The rest of our family, my older brother and sister, my brother-in-law, and a very close friend of the family, almost like a father, sat in the waiting room, despondent in the July heat, waiting anxiously for death to come. The doctors told us she had only hours to live and would not pull through the night.

I had not seen my mother since Christmas. Then her body was becoming very frail, but she had managed to appear strong and jovial in making a Christmas celebration for all of us. For she was that way, no matter what befell her—poverty, illness, or deep hurt—she would pull together all her resources and fight what had to be fought within herself, not wanting others to know the real agony she was facing.

I became panic-stricken as I approached my mother’s bed, passing by the other women in the ward without a notice, not even stopping to talk to my family. I saw my mother’s completely jaundiced face. Her neck and arms had become so thin her veins and bone-joints protruded. She was under sedation and breathing heavily. Her mouth was parched and the dry skin on her lips was cracked. My whole being became filled with shock and fright, and disgust at what had been done to my mother by the cancer.

I kissed my mother’s forehead. In a quivering, crying voice, with tears streaming from my eyes, I spoke, “It’s me, your son, Paul. I have finally arrived. I am here.” There was no answer, no gesture of recognition. She did not lift her hands to my face; she did not embrace me as she had always done before. She lay there, breathing heavily, in agonized gasps. I felt the awful chasm between us; my voice was calling to her, talking to her, crying for her, but there was no answer, no response. I stroked her hair and forehead more than an hour, without stopping to rest or talk to anyone. Then our close friend was at the bedside with me, tears trickling out of his eyes, too, for the woman he had loved so genuinely. I could not talk to him at all. My throat was choked with tearful hurting and a terrible upsurging of lonely, helpless feeling. I refused to sink into loneliness. In her fight now I wanted to fight with her, to suffer for her, to be strong for her. That was all it was humanly possible for me to do, all I could do. Inside I tried to feel with her, to fight with her, for this I knew she was doing inside, even though she could not talk or respond to me.

She lived until the Sunday morning after the Fourth of July, occasionally during Friday and Saturday morning stirring and asking for some liquid on her lips or to have her position changed. This was the only kind of communication that came from her.

That Thursday night was the most difficult, but it was difficult all the way, for the feelings of warmth that kept trying to emerge and be expressed were futile and frustrated by my mother’s inability to respond to me. I so much wanted to tell her that I had come to realize what a good mother she had really been to me, how much her relation to me had meant in my growth, despite all the arguments, the hurts, and the hates that I had felt so many times in my life. The doctors came in and out through the four days, checking her intravenous feeding apparatus, checking her heart beat, giving her needles. The nurses came in to see if she were all right, the aides came occasionally to bathe her. The other patients had visitors, talking jovially and happily about going home soon, while my family felt the agony of my mother’s dying and waited for it to be over. We had a hard time to keep from feeling that she was already dead, taken from us. It was difficult not to become impersonal toward her, not to talk about the funeral arrangements.

Saturday morning my mother was put under an oxygen tent because her breathing had become such painful gasps for air, for life itself. She struggled so to respond to those around her. This day, the feelings of warmth—and those of separation and loneliness—were mingled with the suffering for and with her. I stood by her side as the doctors flicked their fingers before my mother’s eyes, and checked her heart, and told me that she was not in contact, that all she was aware of or could feel or respond to was physical sensation, pains in her body or the prick of a needle going into her thin, frail arms.

Some of the family, and I too, talked about funeral arrangements when the doctors stated that she was not in contact and that she would die very shortly. I was bothered by this kind of talk, even though I knew it was important to get things worked out. I could not accept the fact of the impersonality of it and soon I began to feel angry with myself.

Then my mother’s eyes opened a little. She looked around the oxygen tent, frightened and dazed by where she found herself. She seemed to be trying to fight her way out of the oxygen tent, out of the bed and the hospital, into life and health. I felt she was alive again and feared she heard us talking about the funeral arrangements. I told the family to talk outside, that Momma was awake. They stopped talking and looked on as I talked with my mother, telling her not to be afraid of the oxygen tent, that it was there to help her breathe. She groaned and tried to turn her head toward me. My whole family felt that she was in contact with life again and talked with her, although the only signs of awareness that she showed were her groans and the moving of her eyes. She had a tear on the side of her eye, as though it hurt to be dying and to hear her family talk of a funeral for her, but it seemed to be this hurt that enabled her to make contact again with us. I felt warmth surging within me and, finally overcoming my impersonal feelings, felt again that this was my mother, and that no matter if she were dying of cancer I had to care for her, be with her, and suffer with her until death did actually come; otherwise it would be all wrong, all foolish and awful. Above all I had to remain her son and maintain the deepest relationship with her until the final moment.

It was this that helped me work through some of my hurt and lonely feelings, and feel a little alive. This seeming wakefulness of my mother did not last very long, only a few hours, but it captured the whole family. It made us more compassionate in our caring for her, stroking her forehead, getting the doctors to give her needles when she was in pain, and putting liquids on her parched lips and tongue. I talked with her, telling her where she was, telling her not to fear about needing to take care of things. She seemed to hear me. I went on to tell her about my wife and her grandson. It made me feel again that I was her son and she was my mother. It made me feel again that though I might not be completely heard by her, at least it was important to be there, not to look at her impersonally as someone dying, as out of reach already by death. It made me feel that it was not futile to continue to care, that I must keep trying to feel for and with her, that I must live each moment with her.

She went back into a coma a few hours after she opened her eyes; the whole ward was filled with her agonizing gasping for breath. It seemed to be her last communication with the world, with her family, and with me. This was now her voice. It helped me to maintain the personal warmth and concern for her, which for a time I had almost given up, not realizing how important it was to be a person to her even in the face of death.

The funeral arrangements, the sitting in the funeral parlor, the burial, were all unreal. A rush of time overtook me; I felt weak and exhausted and guilty—a failure, because I had not come to see my mother earlier, to talk with her, to eat with her, to laugh with her. I felt deeply lonely because I felt that despite all my attempts I had failed to communicate with her, had failed to give her enough of myself, so that she could respond. I felt miserable because I had failed so many times in the past to respond to her help, to accept the warmth and love she tried to give me. Another wave of loneliness overcame me as I considered the times when I fought her, hated her, and pushed her away from me.

Then there was something beyond the guilt and isolation. There was the feeling that in the agony of it all, in the bitter moments of twisted emotions, loneliness and separation, I had received a sense of eternity through my mother. This time in her giving, I was free to accept and ready to feel and receive from her. She gave me many personal and important feelings and values, ultimates seeded in her dying moments Through her I came to see that in the desperate moments of actuality that seem to overtake us we overlook the fact that in each moment, in each of us, eternity itself is embedded.

What makes death significant is the awareness of the uniqueness of each relationship we have. This was my mother; the word “mother” brings on a flow of feeling and past experiences and years of living together, loving together, and hating, too. The fighting and conflicts do not seem important anymore, the arguments and intense pains and emotions that clouded the relationship have evaporated. This was my mother, and I realize the uniqueness of our relationship. It was not an impersonal fact of someone having cancer and dying, but it was a basic relationship that can never be repeated, a piece of eternity, never to be the same anywhere. These actual moments with her are mine forever. In her dying, I was able to become open to myself and to my mother, to claim our relationship, to look back upon the past in quick moments while at her bedside and realize the times she did give me warmth and love, and the times when pain and emotional conflict blocked the giving and the receiving.

Through my mother’s dying and through my loneliness, I gained a sense of the value of the person in the present moment which is always filled with the opportunity of cutting through our conflicts and feeling the real concern we have for each other. I realized how so many of our basic relationships are threatened by our own impersonal attitudes, our concerns, jealousies, and hates. The frightening fact struck me that even in our caring for each other, providing for each other, living with each other, we can overlook the uncommunicative sense and breath of life, the silent loneliness that makes us what we are, that seeps down inside our lives, almost unaware, rooted into the center and depth of our personality and being.

Maybe the value of a bitter and painful loneliness is that in the intensity of the pain and feelings, we can come to realize our own worth in relation to another person. Through the feelings of loneliness, separation, guilt, fear, and helplessness in the face of death, I felt a deep relatedness to my mother, and through this came a feeling of warmth and compassion for others. She gave me a sense of the depths of the human being and human existence that can only be found through a close, personal relationship. I have come to understand how through anguish, pain and loneliness, a person could find the depths of himself and of another. In those moments with her, there was little time for hating, little time for conflict. All my energies were concentrated on the upsurge of warmth and concern and knowing of a personal love and the loneliness of standing within a relationship in the final moment. As at my birth, she gave me life, so in her death she gave me new life.

He stood in the doorway of my office, a terribly stooped old man. Pain and misery, heavy wrinkles, lined his face. He stared beyond me, fiery, piercing eyes fixed to the floor, a face filled with indescribable loneliness and defeat. “Won’t you come in and sit down?” I asked gently. He entered the room, but he did not sit. He began to pace, back and forth, back and forth. Increasingly, I felt the turbulence inside him which electrified my office with a kind of frozen tension. The tension mounted, becoming almost unbearable. Heavy beads of perspiration fell from his face and forehead. Tears filled his eyes. He started to speak several times but the words would not come. He stroked his hair roughly and pulled at his clothing. The pacing continued.

I felt his suffering keenly, deep inside me, spreading throughout my whole body. I remarked, “So utterly painful and lonely.” “Lonely,” he cried. “Lonely!” “Lonely!” he shouted, “I’ve been alone all my life.” He spoke in rasping tones, his nerves drawn taut. “I’ve never been an honest person. I’ve never done anything I really wanted to do, nothing I truly believed in. I don’t know what I believe in anymore. I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know what to do with myself. I wish I could die—how I have yearned, how I have longed for death to come, to end this misery. If I had the courage, I would kill myself. These headaches. I don’t know how much more I can stand. I haven’t slept for months. I wake up in the middle of the night. Everything is dark, black, ugly, empty. Right now my head is throbbing. I take pills. I try to rest. Nothing helps. My head is splitting. I don’t think I can take this pain much longer. I wake with a start. My heart fills with terror. My wife and children are asleep, with me in the house—but I am entirely alone. I am not a father. I am not a husband. I’m no one. Look! See these tears. I could weep forever. Forever. I sometimes feel I cry for the whole world—a world that’s sour and lost.”

All this the old man uttered—sobbing, choking, sighing, gasping for breath. The sounds were thick. His tongue was fastened to his gums. Only with the greatest effort did he talk. It was almost unendurable. The lancinating physical pain and mental anguish mounted relentlessly. There was not even a moment of suspension so we could breathe normally and recapture our resources. His distress was cumulative, increasingly exhaustive.

In his completely weakened state, unknown urges, unknown capacities, a surprising strength enabled him to continue. From the beginning he had never been a real person. It was too late now, he felt. Nothing in life was real. For seventy-four years he had lived by other people’s descriptions of him, others’ perceptions of him. He had come to believe that this was his real self. He had become timid and shy when he might have discovered and developed social interests. He was silent when he might have something to say. He played cards every Tuesday and attended club meetings every Thursday when he might have enjoyed being alone, or conversing with his wife, or developing an avocation or hobby. He listened to the radio and watched television every evening when he might have discovered values in music and books. He did not know his real interests and talents, his real aspirations and goals. He never gave himself time to discover himself.

He asked in agony, “Do you know what it means not to feel anything, to be completely without feeling? Do you understand what it is to know only pain and loneliness? My family doesn’t understand me. They think I have these headaches because my business is failing. They think I roam the house at night, moving from bed to couch to chair to floor, because I’m worrying about my business. They think I’m worrying about new possibilities and plans. So they soften me and treat me gingerly. Husband and father must have a quiet house, so the house is quiet. He must not be upset, so he is avoided. He must not be expected to be friendly and sociable because he is passive and shy. He must be indirectly talked into doing what they want, in the right way, at the right moment. It takes careful planning. He must have sympathy, even if it’s false, to be able to face the tough, competitive world outside. They cannot and will not recognize that this man they handle with kid gloves, whom they fear upsetting, whom they decide has to be coddled and manipulated into buying new clothes, a new car, a new home, all the other possessions a family feels it must have, this man does not really exist and never did. But who is he? Can’t you see? I do not really exist. I am nothing. Do you know what it is not to know how you feel, not to know your own thoughts, not to know what you believe, not to know what you want, not to be sure of anything but endless pain and suffering? And everyone else takes you for granted, on already formed opinions and actions, the same words, the same ways. How do I start to live again? I’m dying and I can’t stop breathing. I can’t stop living.”

These were the themes of our talks together—self-denial, estrangement, rejection, excruciating pain, spreading loneliness. We met eight times. In each visit, his suffering and sense of isolation increased, reaching unbelievable heights. Often, I thought: “Surely this is it. He has reached the breaking point.” He seemed at the very end of his power and resources. But he kept coming until I wondered whether I had not reached the breaking point. The only thing that kept me going was the certainty that without me there would be no one. I could not give up, abandon him, even when I questioned my own strength to continue to live through our conversations and the lonely terror not expressible in words. I suffered deeply in these hours with him. Each time he came I felt on the verge of sinking into total despair. Often when he wept, there were tears in my eyes too, and when his head ached painfully, I, too, felt the pain. When he paced and pulled at himself, I felt a terrible restlessness and agitation; when he was utterly alone and lonely, I was alone and lonely too. My full, complete presence was not enough to alleviate his suffering, his self-lacerating expressions. I felt an awful loneliness and desolation as I was not able to help him find a beginning, locate a direction, a new pathway of relatedness to himself and others. It hurt me deeply to see him grow increasingly, unbelievably tortured and not be able to help him find a meaning or even some beginning belief in the possibility of a good life. He was dying before me and something within me was dying too. I could not reach him. I do not know what effort of will power, what inner strivings of the heart, what forces kept me going in the face of this unendurable, mounting desolation, despair, and loneliness. I felt defeated and weakened, yet each time he came I met him squarely, honestly, directly. Each time my capacity for bearing with him seemed to be reaching a terminal point, new threads inside revived me. Somehow fresh strength flowed into me, mysteriously, encouraging me and enabling me to continue. I listened to him and believed in him. I was convinced he had the power within himself to find a new meaning in life. I continued to live with him in the crucial hours of psychic dying. My entire office filled with his aching. I could feel it everywhere in the room, in the floor, the walls, the furniture, the papers and books on my desk. It settled irrevocably and was stationary. For some time after he left, I did not move. I remained heavy as the feeling he left when he departed.

Then on the ninth appointment he did not come. What could this defection mean? How had I failed? Had he sensed my own growing struggle, my own exhaustion, my own loneliness? I searched within myself and within our relation but I could find no satisfactory answer.

Two weeks passed before he called. He spoke in a calm voice, in a totally different way from any previous words. “It’s all so fresh and raw,” he said, “and so new and startling that I’m constantly uncertain, but I feel I am coming into a totally new existence. I sometimes doubt that what I am feeling will last, but the feelings have persisted now almost two weeks and I’m beginning to recognize them as my own. I do not know what is happening or how, but by some strange miracle or inner working, I am beginning to breathe again and to live again. I do not want to see you just now because I must have further confirmation, but I will call you soon.”

Six weeks later the old man came for the last time. I could barely recognize him. He looked youthful. His face was alive. His smile was radiant and so thrilling I felt tingling sensations everywhere inside me. He spoke warmly, confidently, “I came only to see your face light up, to be warmed by the gleam in your eyes. I know how much you suffered. I have seen your tortured face even after leaving you. I’ll just sit here with you quietly a few minutes.” So we sat in silence, each revelling in the birth, each warmed by a bond that emerged from deep and spreading roots in the hours of anguish and loneliness. We were no longer alone or lonely. We had found a new strength and sustenance in each other.

The fundamental communion in which we suffered enabled him to get to the very depths of his experience. Perhaps in arriving at the foundation of his grief and loneliness, immediate death or immediate life were the only choices within reach. He chose to live. From his rock bottom loneliness emerged a new life and a real self was restored.