ORPHAN

It’s odd to now think of myself as a forty-nine year-old orphan but, I suppose, in some sense of the word, I am really.

Not in the Dickensian “holding an empty bowl out for more gruel” sense of the word, of course, nor in the truly desperate way that young children can be left without anyone due to  tragedy, or an accident, or the thousand-and-one other ways that children’s lives can be torn apart by circumstances beyond their control and leave them dependent upon the kindness of strangers.

But nevertheless, this Christmas was the first one I have spent without having any kind of a parent and it has felt rather...

Odd.

Don’t misunderstand me, because I’m really not trying to be flippant here, or to belittle the sufferings of others. I do understand that my circumstances are nothing like as appalling as the real orphans, but the word does seem to keep rolling around inside my mind and I’m just trying to get some kind of grasp upon it to understand quite how things have changed for me in a philosophical and, perhaps, peculiar sense.

My own story isn’t a tragic one (at least not in that way) and I wouldn’t want to equate it with any of the sort of suffering that others have, who have had a loss, but nevertheless it is rather an unusual thought to have that, in the most general and loosest of at least one of the senses of the word, an orphan is what I have become, and an orphan is now what I am.

Of course, this isn’t unusual. In the “normal” course of things, this situation comes to pretty much everyone eventually, sooner or later, and it’s always a difficult thing to have to come to terms with, no matter who you are, or what age you are when it comes…

Some people I know have managed to reach a similar age to mine without losing either parent, others I know lost them both when they were far, far too young, and it’s hard not to feel slightly envious of the former and utter shame for trying to equate your own situation with that of the latter.

“To lose one parent could be considered unfortunate, but to lose two smacks of carelessness…” as Oscar Wilde probably never even thought.

Hmmm... Slight glimmerings of flippancy creeping in again there... Not a good sign, even though people claim that humour is little more than a coping mechanism.

Still, if you didn’t laugh, eh...?

I do miss them both though, in the most unusual of ways. After all, my relationship with my mother was far too turbulent in recent years to be able to quite understand it yet, and I lost my father at a time when we might have started having more interesting things to say to each other, and at a crucial time just before I was able to find some direction for whatever way I wanted to make in the world...

Time to shut up, I think, because I obviously don’t really have a clue what I’m talking about. The thought has been playing on my mind recently, and I needed to unravel it and try and put it down in words.

Sadly, the words don’t seem to make all that much sense when I read them back, which probably says something profound about one of the great unknowables of our lives...