Jay was always the first to arrive at the café and the last to leave. He didn’t contribute much to the conversation, but he knew many people and was well liked. Several times I tried asking how he was living now that his wife had passed and his children were far away in the States. He’d say everything was great, then turn to one of the others and ask how their weekend was.
In the last few years before my dad passed, I would go to Tyre in Lebanon every three months. Every few days we’d meet at the café: me, Jay and a few other friends.
Once, the driver sent to pick me up was late. Not knowing how long he’d be, I waited outside for about fifteen minutes, and that’s when I saw that Jay hadn’t left. He was still in the café, sitting alone.
I don’t know what was going through his mind. I felt sorry for him.
Friday. It’s past 8 a.m., and I’m still reading Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say. There are about twenty pages left. Should I continue reading, or get on with what’s going to be a busy day? I’m already late for the gym, one of three workouts I do a week.
So I drop the book and run to the gym. By 9:30, I’m expected at work: an important meeting on new product development. Then I rush through the rest of my day. It’s around 4:30, and I have a padel game at 5. I really love playing padel. It unwinds me.
After the game, I’m absolutely shattered. The first thing I need is a few puffs of the Davidoff Primeros cigar I’ve been smoking lately. I don’t know why, but I get a strong urge to smoke, especially after padel. I know that’s not good, but I still do it. I text home and ask them to delay dinner a bit, so I can have a few more drags.
It’s past 7 p.m. now. I draw on my cigar and think for a minute. What am I still doing here at the padel club, drinking beer, watching a dull game, surrounded by younger people who belong here?
Only the next morning, while writing in my journal, does Jay come to mind. The man in the café, first to arrive and last to leave. Am I being Jay at the padel club? Am I the one now staying on to pass the time?
A week ago, I came home early, at 4 p.m. That’s the usual time I knock on the glass and Sassy, my cat, turns around and waits for me to come in, then circles around me and jumps on my lap. But she didn’t. She’s gone.
I didn’t want my cigar, I didn’t want to read, I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to be alone, think of her and feel the grief. The house was quiet, and not being able to share my grief with most people made it worse. Who grieves a cat?They’d probably think.
I had a padel game in an hour, and for the first time I wasn’t looking forward to it. In the end, I asked my son to play for me.
Sitting with my journal, I think of the book I didn’t want to put down yesterday. Artie Dam is a high school history teacher, pleasant and community-minded, living what looks like a full life. And he isn’t happy. One line stays with me:
“…mostly we travel through life unsighted, grasping only the smallest details of one another’s selves, including our own, thinking all the while that we can see.”
What I see in him is what I think I see in myself.
Carl Jung wrote about the persona and the shadow. The persona, from the Latin word for mask, is my busy face: liked, respected at work, in the community, at the padel club.
The shadow is the part of ourselves we disown and hide. Perhaps so that we remain liked and included. But for a few minutes, grief cracked my persona wide open. Within a week, I had put it back on.
I didn’t find what was underneath by asking myself why. Instead, I saw it in Jay, sitting alone; in Artie Dam, alone and desperate; at the padel club; and finally in my journal the next morning.
I guess I am lonely too.
Jung wrote in Alchemical Studies:
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
And I think about the people around me at the padel club, the ones I thought all belonged. What if they were all wearing masks too?
Later that morning, I go to collect some croissants and meet a friend. He asks me how I am. I tell him everything is great. Then I ask him how his weekend is going.
I walk away, and Sassy comes to mind.
I drop a heartbeat.
A few heartbeats.