An Ending

It is probably age and also, perhaps, the spirit of the times, but I have a strong urge to write my story, to say, “Look at me!  Listen to me!  I don’t want my story to just disappear.”  I keep coming back here and trying to reboot my blogging habit, and then I find that it has been a year since my last effort.  Probably the main difficulty for me in keeping up my blog is that I write to a number of friends; my letters to them are as long as my blogs tend to be or longer, so these letters absorb most of my impulse to write.  I lived much of my life far from my hometown to which I returned as retirement loomed, so all my friends live far from me; I love them and do not wish our friendship to lapse.  A friendship where little effort is made to communicate regularly becomes a memory, not a friendship. Correspondence for me fails to provide two things I really miss, stories from the past and the anonymity that my blog provides where I can feel comfortable describing people and events as honestly and freely as I remember them.  I very much want to tell my story fully and exactly as I recall things.  I do not like arguments and I do not like hurting people’s feelings.  One of the most amazing things I have learned from blogging and reading comments is how different what I have written is from what readers have read.  People have sometimes attributed completely different emotions and viewpoints to some topics from what I meant to express.  So I try to avoid many topics in letters to friends because my memories or viewpoint differ from theirs, or are things in which they have no interest because they don’t know the events I would be discussing.

I suppose the above may imply that the headline of this entry refers to me ceasing my blogging, but that is not the case.  I love writing this despite the obvious fact that I rarely do so.  I continue to hope that I will bestir myself to blog more frequently.  Alas, the headline refers to time spent with the man I love, Priyo. 

In the last few years, I have spent many months each year living with Priyo in Gupapur, the capital and only large city of Trinamapur where he now is stationed.  He is still the great guy I fell for, but each year when I visit he has less time when he is not working or taking care of family obligations.  During my last visit prior to this year we usually found time to visit some local state park or lake or some other place to enjoy together once a week.  This year, we managed to find this time together only once per month on average.  Priyo’s job requires him to be on the job six days a week.  He sometimes had to stay there as many as twelve hours in a day.  On many of his days off, he had some family obligation to which he had to attend.  I used to go with him when he went home to his family compound in a tiny village to the south, but I do so much less now because when I am there I am in the home of his parents and his brother’s family and none of them speak English.  His dad has a small knowledge of English, but not enough to have any conversation beyond, “How are you?”  As Priyo goes about doing all the tasks he went there to do, I am stuck in the home of people I can not talk to.  I am never sure I am behaving in a way that meets local standards of courtesy.

Roughly two years ago, my personality or mind or whatever it is began to change radically.  I stopped looking forward to new experiences that involved uncertainty.  My taste in books and movies changed.  One of the most surprising changes is that stumbling through conversations in distant lands with people who spoke minimal English or with whom I had to speak in my far from fluent Arabic no longer entertained me.  I let my hair go white - it is astonishing how differently I am seen with white hair than I was with my poorly colored hair of a few years ago.  I have become increasingly unable to deal with strange food - I loathe the local cuisine in the Northeast States of India.  I dread the inevitable meal I will encounter when I visit someone’s home there.  I made several friends when I first visited Trinamapur, but I just lost interest in meeting new people.  These changes surprised me, but they were real and permanent.  One result is that I spent nearly all of my last visit to Priyo alone in our apartment with unreliable electricity, internet and water supply.  I realized I just do not wish to spend this kind of time for months at a time, even though I love Priyo and love being with him.  So even before the coronavirus struck, I knew this was my last visit.  An even more powerful reason that I cannot return is that Priyo has finally succumbed to the unceasing pressure from everyone in his family, social circle and even from casual strangers, to marry.  Because of his job, he must remain in his remote state, so he does not have the anonymity that he might find in Delhi or Mumbai.  Living there, he really can not look forward to a satisfying life if he does not conform to the social norms.  Even if I loved living in Trinamapur, I cannot provide a happy future for Priyo because I will be gone long before he is.  The free health care in India does not extend to foreigners like me.  Priyo insists that his marriage will not cut into our time together, but I have lived long enough to know that is never true.  The travel to and from Trinamapur becomes ever more stressful.  The upshot is that Priyo is now married and I will not be returning to India. 

We love each other; we talk nearly every day.  Happily, he seems to have picked the best possible wife and I think, over time he will become content, especially if there are children as he hopes.  I can already see signs that he is accepting his fate and is becoming more contented.  He continues to insist he loves me and that he thinks of me all the time and I believe this, but I can sense that new obligations are beginning to take more of his thoughts. 

So I am back on the scrap heap that is old age.  I regret nothing; I had an amazing six years with him that I never dreamed would come to me at the age of 71.  Few people get that so late in life, and I am grateful for all of it.   And now, what?