Alone

We have just received a poem from the widow of my American cousin, who died suddenly last year from West Nile virus. It is one of the saddest and most moving we have read, getting to the heart of a loving relationship - and its ending. I reproduce it in its entirety, for all who have suffered loss and are grieving.

Alone

Alone is the saddest word
Even though we know we are separate
We disguise what we cannot deny
By loving and allying ourselves with a partner
If we’re lucky
We tell ourselves we are protected,
No longer alone, joined and safe
We happily live with this delusion
Until we can’t
When, stunned by a bulbous intruder lodged in an artery,
Our partner’s heart ceases to beat
The gurney holds just one
And when our partner slips away
Aloneness settles over us like a fog
We are exposed, defenseless
No one has our back or loans a front
Everyone else seems ballasted
We could say our companion is just travelling
Or busy in another room
But we can’t
We become anxious
We want to flee or hide
We cry at odd times, such as when someone asks,
“How are you?”
It was not supposed to end this way
The final curtain call was a future event
No one would be left alone
What happens when everything changes?
First, there are no tears
Numb, you move and talk by rote
You do not allow yourself to fall apart
You exist in a parallel universe
With your best friend forever gone you write an obituary
Though the person who knows you best
Will never write one for you
You accept that you will die alone
You become a seeker
You ask, “What is the point of being alive?”
You make a list
Your love your family
You like politics, reading, thinking
You find your friends stimulating
You are warmed by the kindness of people
All solid reasons
None convince you
You fear you have lost the will to live
You rant at the random hurt of the world
Still, you get up in the morning
You do this day after day
You do this though the clothes you’re wearing
Are the same clothes you wore yesterday
You feed your dog and look in her eyes
Grateful to be welcomed
You get up because that is what
Your body has been trained to do
You get up because the life force
Pushes you to persist, even when it’s clear
That the point is that there is no point
Yet you decide to keep looking
For reasons to stay engaged
You tell yourself your missing partner
Would want you to do that
But you do not delude yourself
You are tired of deluding yourself
You feel sure that for the foreseeable future
The point of it all has been lost

Betsy Marston