“You need people”

Shortly after my wife died, over five years ago, well-meaning good friends weighed in telling me I needed people.
I was devastated — still am, somewhat.
As a result I began attending a church-sponsored grief-share, a chance to be devastated to tears without roiling the unbereaved.
I attended about a year, but tired of what seemed to be “same-old, same-old.”
Finally I left, but friends still advised I needed people.
By then I had lived on my own over a year, and though still devastated, began to question my need for people.
I’ve said it many times: my wife was the best friend I ever had. But I began to realize the best friend I ever had was me (gasp).
I’ve always been able to entertain myself, sometimes to the dismay of others.
I remember in college a good friend wondering why I was happy drawing ’55 Chevys over-and-over.
I was doing them from scratch = no cross-hatch from a side-elevation photograph. So getting things right was a struggle.
Proportions would be WRONG, yet they determined the outcome.
The poor guy seemed climbing walls, yet I wasn’t. College could be irritable  and boring, yet I had an outlet.
I still do it, although no longer drawing ’55 Chevys. I can’t even draw since my stroke; my fingers are too sloppy.
But every morning as I begin breakfast I take my pencil, engage legal-pad, and start slingin’ words.
“Writing” I guess, although I ain’t Tolstoy or Thomas Pynchon.
I’ve called it “slinging words” since high-school, when a 12th-grade English-teacher told me I could write well. “But Dr. Zink,” I said; his name was “Zink.” “All it is ‘slinging words.’”
And every night before bed I fire up this laptop to process train photographs my brother and I took — we’re railfans.
Artist at work, and the artist is me. Artistic input figgered into each photo. But an artist selected the good pictures.
Often this laptop was on earlier to key in what I wrote. I have to wedge that in among all the other duties I’ve incurred since my wife died: laundry, grocery shopping, meals, bill-pay, lawn mowing, plus the 89 bazilyun medical appointments that began with my aging.
My guess is this is what angered my father most; I didn’t need his approval. The fact I could disregard his occasional beatings and continual badmouthing drove him nuts.
The fact I never got that approval is depressing. Perhaps because of that I became my own advocate and judge.
My counselor tells me I’m lucky to have so many interests. Many people my age don’t. All they had was their job.
The other night the national TV-news featured a retired judge who lost his beloved wife. Like me he was alone; nothing but four silent walls with which to interact.
His solution was to build a backyard swimming-pool, then invite the neighbor-kids.
So there he’d sit in his lawn-chair, watching the neighbor-kids frolic in his pool.
I don’t have that problem.
It’s approaching midnight, but here I am alone in my house slamming away on this ‘pyooter, pleased as punch!
Sure beats Oprah, Facebook too. Both boring as Hell!