My Aunt's Legacy

Dear You,

Because she created such an imagined life, my aunt now finds herself in an awful fix. For over a half-century, Aunt G arranged everything as though she had been born into privilege. With a husband who did her bidding and worked sometimes three jobs to provide, she made her house secure, her acquaintances limited, and her outlook narrow. Now she is old and mostly friendless, and she is terrified.

I do not diminish her gifts, nor do I love her less for knowing all this. I have some sense of what it took her to move from a deprived childhood -- father dead when she was a teenager, the Depression making the family hungry and without a home, and who knows what else? I know she has always been intelligent. She has always been generous and loving to me. But on one enormous truth she was blind.

It matters little what you have -- possessions, money, clothes, address -- if you do not weave a tapestry of relationships while you can, before you grow cold with age and need the comfort only that can provide. What friends she had are dead or dying. Many in the family now keep their distance, and those who remain cannot possibly provide all that she requires.

On the occasions when I can visit I come away with great sadness.

The pleasure of my company

Dear You,

With no expectation (and little hope) of increasing my wealth beyond my pension, my chief source of income now is time . . . a dwindling resource, one to be hoarded. As a result, I have no wish to spend it in occupations I dislike.

In recent years I have been declining invitations, and I have done my best to avoid the company of disagreeable persons. I leave it to others to increase someone's happiness in those instances where I can find better uses of my time.

For instance, by finding time to be alone. As it turns out I enjoy my own company; I have learned that solitude has nothing whatsoever to do with loneliness. "I'm bored" has not crossed my lips -- perhaps ever. Certainly not in my memory. And I am astonished to hear it from others. Indeed, it is one of the litmus tests about someone as to whether I might like to spend time or energy on them: "Tell, me. Under what circumstances are you bored?" Any answer but 'None!' would be the wrong one.

It is a crowded and noisy world -- I need no more distractions as I continue to search for what nourishes me.

One Seat at the Movies

Dear You,

It's Friday night of my Week of Living Alone. With no company, I decided to go to a matinee, seeing a film I'd heard about recently. "Evening" has Vanessa Redgrave, Clare Danes, Natasha Richardson, Meryl Streep . . . others I can't think of as I write this. I love going to the movies with you, but I don't really mind when I have to go by myself. A good movie is a wonderful experience all by itself . . . but it is always enriched when it can be shared.

Sharing this one would have been a particular treat. It's about relationships -- those that we have and those we perhaps wish we had. And it's a movie that might be wasted on someone young.

I've enjoyed many kinds of movies -- thrillers, animations, historical fiction, biographies, documentaries, foreign language . . . I can't think of a film I wouldn't mind seeing. My favorites now, however, are those that explore relationships. And I think that in the end, it's what we come to understand is the most important aspect of our lives.

What I would have enjoyed, had you been there with me, is a conversation about whether or not anything we do because of our hearts is ever a mistake . . . no matter how it turns out.