thoughts from the evening commute

I have a gal-pal who is constantly moaning to me that she is single. I’m sure I’m not the only victim of her whiney diatribe, but it’s exhausting.

I'd love to have 30 seconds to rifle through her medicine cabinet and figure out the mystery of her stamina.

Recently, she and I were having coffee (a regular ritual that usually leaves me wanting to impale myself on the chairs at Tim Horton’s). And we had the same conversation we'd had over a half-dozen other coffees:

She: I hate being single. Being single sucks.

Me: Yup.

She: You know what I wish? I wish that someone could just tell me there’s someone out there for me. I wish someone could just GUARANTEE me.

Me: Well, that’s not gonna happen. You’ll only know he exists when he finally shows up.

She: Why are YOU so OK with being single?

Me: *fighting the urge to stick my plastic butter knife in her hand …

Me: Well, I’m not. But it’ll happen when it happens.

She: How do you know?

Me: Because it’s what I BELIEVE. I think there’s someone out there for everyone. You just don’t know when or where or how. If you’re one of the luckiest people, you find them early and can spend a long, long time with them. Sometimes that doesn’t happen, but you just have to trust that when you truly need them, they’ll be there.

She: But HOW do you KNOW???? I need to KNOW!

Me: I just do. Maybe it’ll be tomorrow, maybe not. You see stories all the time about people who meet in a nursing home, hang out for five minutes and share some jello … then one of them is gone … but the most important thing is that they found each other eventually … and that five minutes was worth the wait.

She: DON’T tell me I’m going to have to wait until I’m 80! I can’t wait that long! I’m going to die old and alone. I just know it.

~~~

I think about being old and alone a lot. I think, at a certain age, we all start to.

There is an elderly Asian gentleman who often takes the same bus as me in the evening. He’s probably in his 80s. I don’t know where he’s coming from or going to, but I watch him sometimes.

He always sits in the same spot, if he can … right up at the front, where he can see out the windshield to spot his stop. He usually falls asleep and snaps awake in a panic, half-standing to look out at the road, to make sure he’s not snoozed past his destination.

He’s very sweet looking. His upper eyelids are heavy and like crepe paper, almost hanging over past his eyelashes like awnings.

It used to make me feel sorry for him that he had to take the bus. I wondered why he didn’t have anyone to drive him where he needed to go, especially in the winter when it’s cold and icy and treacherous out. And I used to feel sad that maybe he didn’t have someone to love and take care of him.

Then I looked closer and more thoughtfully. His hair is always cut neatly. He’s always dressed nicely … stylishly, even … his clothes look new and as if they were chosen for him by someone else. And his pants .. one day, he was wearing a cute pair of jeans …for a guy his age, he looked pretty fashionable.

His jeans were hemmed, I noticed. He’s not very tall, so they would’ve needed to be taken up… and I saw that they were sewn with white thread. A tailor would’ve matched the thread colour to the jeans, so it was obvious that someone in his family has done it for him. One small teeny tiny detail that showed he was cared for.

And I felt better. Everyone gets old, but no one should be alone.

~~~

Last night, on my second bus, there was an older lady. Probably also in her 70s or 80s. She had a walker and was obviously very sick, coughing constantly and exhausted-looking.

She reminded me of a goldfish that had accidentally jumped out of its bowl. Dry, tired, gasping. She kept coughing into her mittened palm.

Her hair was messy. She had no hat on. She probably shouldn’t have even been out of the bus on a cold night like last night, let alone taking herself somewhere on the bus by herself. She was talking … no sound, just silently chatting away, in between coughing fits. There was no one beside her or across from her, so I wondered who she thought she was speaking to.

I found myself so sad (and was grateful for the sunglasses I had on, when the tears started to gush), thinking she was probably not going to be around much longer … and sat there hoping that she had, in her life, really been loved by someone … and I hoped that was who she was talking to … that she was finding some comfort and companionship and feelings of having been truly in love, even if it was only with the lingering memories of that person in her head.

And, even if he wasn’t around to drive her to the doctor or put on her hat or hem her pants for her, that she still wouldn’t be alone, even if she was the only person who could see or hear him.

If she hadn’t, I wished, for her, that she would find him soon.

~~~