If you make a quick on-line search about loneliness in America, you may be surprised that between twenty to thirty-three percent of the population feels lonely every week. There is a myriad of causes for this condition which I am not qualified to delve into as my sociological skills are suspect, but phrases like depression, political angst, feed-back bubble, frustration with technology, uncertainty, isolation, and others, are all thrown around with rabbit-hole parsing. I wouldn’t know where to begin knitting together all the nuance of psychiatric terminology.

I have been living alone and thinking about such a condition, however, as my life partner has been away for two and a half weeks, the longest separation of our fifty-five year married life. I hesitate to use this experience as an example as I am aware of so many contemporary situations of excruciating separation. I can not imagine experiencing the death of a child, regardless of circumstances, or the disappearance/ “disappearing” of a loved one.

But I consider our separation as a kind of personal test. One day I re-read Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance.” He states at one point: “Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.” Though discontent may not equate with/to loneliness, the best way to avoid the latter is to “Trust Thyself” (akin to Socrates’ “Know Thyself;” and Buddha’s “Wisdom Thyself.”)

During this time, I had few obligations and had the freedom to do what I wanted: being a pig by not doing the dishes, not making my bed, not taking showers, or staying up late, etc. But the exercise of breaking my ‘norms’ was not on my agenda. But let me reassure: I am not “a loner.” I had prepared a pre-trip list of all I was going to get done. I am an efficiency aficionado.

Being retired does allow for flexibility so to combat occasional restlessness (nobody to talk to?) I varied my activity: the physical activity of raking walnuts then mowing the lawn, painting the kitchen, and the alternative desk-time of paying bills, revising poems, and organizing family genealogies. I wasn’t a complete recluse; neither was Henry Thoreau during his stay at Walden Pond. I visited my granddaughters at college, had dinner several times with in-laws, and chatted with neighbors on my daily walk around our village.

One beneficial use of technology is how easy it is to communicate across 3,475 miles (looked it up on my iPhone) though the five hour difference in each other’s present introduced a cat-and-mouse sort of game.

As we age, we lose our parents, our friends (yes, I have kept a list) and possibly family members. We try to comfort those who are now left on their own. Compared to others, I count myself very fortunate to have family close by and close. I did write one poem while she was gone.

On your return
                       for Liz

You are home. It will take
as long as your time away
to tell me all about it,
to scroll through the photos
that memory your days
with daughter and friends,
to answer how the wind blew,
how the fiber festival
was a delight, how tiring
travel can be, the journey home.

My to-do list is only partly crossed off—
not much has happened
in our hometown.  I’ll explain later.

The journal of absence is filled
with silly observations—
I can’t complain that I was lonely.

I have exchanged each deleted day
for a welcome as a prisoner
or teenager might, as reward
for my self-reliance, for painting
the kitchen, losing a few pounds.

Fred Wilbur has written in varied genres including essays and blogs, historical research, newspaper columns, magazine articles, book reviews, and book introductions. He has also published three volumes of poetry, and three how-to woodcarving instruction books. His poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out, Conjugation of Perhaps, and The Heft of Promise (Pine Row Press, 2025). The Nelson County Garden Club: The First Fifty Years, 1935-1985 was underwritten by the Nelson County Historical Society (2023).