I’m home and it’s dark and loneliness is seeping in. My daughter’s going on holidays with her dad and my sweetheart’s on a plane and won’t be here for weeks. My neighbour died last night, cracking jokes, her sister told me, and minutes after she died her family watched fireworks from her hospital window, can you imagine, fireworks were being fired off from the top of the mountain she saw every day for years and walked on every day as a younger woman. She lived in this house for decades, treading the floor above my ceiling, and this unfamiliar emptiness mingles with the loneliness I’d feel anyhow at the end of weeks of travelling and talking and playing and loving and parenting. Tomorrow I’ll ring my friends and hope they remember me after all my travelling and absence. Tomorrow I’ll work. This weekend I’ll visit my sister.

Right now I think I’ll crawl under my doona and turn the TV on for company.


Discover more from Jill Walker Rettberg

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

2 thoughts on “lonely

  1. Gianna

    i *love* this post. and condolences.

  2. stephanie

    The loneliness is very difficult, but it does pass. I just finished the weeks of waiting for my kids to come home from vacation with their father (will see them this afternoon…jumping up and down in anticipation), and will soon take them on a trip to the States to see their grandparents. It *is* difficult to be without the ones you love, but soon we will have them back, and will appreciate them all the more for our separation. Relax and remember that you are not alone.

Leave A Comment

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]