When talking about past relationships, single women tend to bring up the question: why did it fall apart? They want to know whose fault it was. As if the default condition was that relationships last till death us part; unless one, or both, owners somehow mess up.
But they don’t last, often despite best efforts. My host is 85 and his wife of 58 years, a 78-year woman, has just left him — not for the netherworld or another man, but for the solitude of senility.
50% of all marriages end in divorce; and a far larger proportion of live-in arrangements (80%?); of those that do not, most would in fact be better off broken apart; they vegetate on legal difficulties, or financial straits, or just plain fear of change. Yet no one asks what they should ask: why are those two still together?
Everything in life is temporary. Everything ends.
Then we end.
In the background of the contrary assumption lurks perhaps the recognition of just this. Since everything changes, therefore something permanent is required. Like Mom, but one who will stick around longer. How unlucky these lucky people who have not learned that a mother’s love can also be transient. That it can be not given, or given and then withdrawn. Trust me, even mother’s love is not permanent.
Then there is the matter of the mammalian comfort we seem to experience in the closeness of another. A rather famous poet expressed it in these words:
i walk all day troubled, jostled, laughed at
in the evening I entrust all my anxiety to your eyes
the stars twinkle above us, put your head on my shoulders, things will get better
OK, it sounds better in the original, but only marginally. Poor little me, my life is so hard, comfort me.
Two weak, fearful, unhappy people can be the opposite together. 0 + 0 = 1.
Oltre Mare 