Those who live alone are in good company
the bottom line
By Antoinette Bosco
Catholic News Service
During the holidays I hear again from friends who live alone how lonely they feel at this time of year. I relate to what they are saying with empathy.
People live alone for many reasons. Some choose this lifestyle, but for many it is a situation imposed on them: A spouse dies, a child moves away.
Most of the time we don’t think about the days to come when we will be without companionship in our home. Then that day arrives. We no longer have loved ones to talk with, eat with, quarrel with, pray with, work or laugh with. We face a turning point and an at-first unknown future, but one that definitely will be different.
I went through this lifestyle change when all my children left home as they entered adulthood. I remember sometimes walking from room to room, feeling a loneliness that almost defied description. I still had my job to go to every day, and that was good. It kept me too busy to keep focusing on my loneliness.
But the emptiness was there, and the quiet. I had no one to cook for, or argue with, or listen to. In all honesty, I think I felt my best usefulness was at an end.
Of course, living alone is not a situation unique to only few of us. In fact, 28 million Americans live alone. That information is found in a new book I grabbed recently because the title caught my attention, A Party of One, Meditations for Those Who Live Alone, by Joni Woelfel (Resurrection Press, an imprint of Catholic Book Publishing Corp.). The best part of the book was the spirit of it.
Woelfel says it bluntly: “As in all stations in life, the unique dynamics of living alone bring their own challenges, lessons, joys and rewards.”
Woelfel’s situation arrived unexpectedly. After many years of marriage, and especially having to survive the suicide of a beloved son, she was given the surprising and terrifying news from her husband that he was leaving her. They subsequently reconciled. But she learned so much from that time when she was suddenly thrust into aloneness that she found herself writing about it.
I found it amazing that she could stay so positive, actually even upbeat, when her life so sadly had plunged her into aloneness. When you have to live alone “for whatever reason,” she tells readers, you can “take ownership” of your life if you remain confident that you are being guided and “upheld by God.”
A word she speaks many times is “empowerment,” and she tells how she found ways to get comfort, inspiration and eventually wisdom in her new and sudden situation of living alone.
Often I felt myself relating to her situation. One chapter, in particular, where she talks about getting sick with influenza, brought back memories. She writes, “As a person living alone, there was no one to bring me chicken soup, a cup of tea or a word of encouragement.”
I could relate, especially when she admits so honestly there was nothing she could do “but float with the experience.” Yet, this somehow, paradoxically, gave her a sense of peace knowing she “was in God’s hands, come what may.”
Woelfel’s advice was what I have learned — that those of us who live alone must take “ownership” for our lives, “confident in being guided and upheld by God.”
Remembering that, we all can rejoice in this holiday season.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law