Life of Solitude Is Just No Good

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

October 17, 1954

A.B. Guthrie, Sr., C.M. Guthrie, Carol & Chuck Guthrie

   MY FATHER began the long sleep a few weeks ago, and a coldly factual appraisal would indicate that his life hadn't been so good.  He saw a lot of death close at hand and picked up more than one man's share of heartache along the way.

   Normally gentle and tolerant and fast with a quip, he was given to long, sinister silences when gloom was riding him hard.  At such times attempts at conversation were apt to bring explosions.  I used to puzzle over these black moods which cast a pall on the household, and wondered why he had so many.  Now that I've done some living and can appreciate the ache that was bottled up inside him I wonder why he had so few.

   He never had much of worldly goods, which bothered him little.  He had friends and family and set big store in both.  He deemed them the essentials.  And as fate whittled away at these cherished possessions he came to know with emphatic certainty that life's riches carried a high price tag.

   I AM REMINDED of a story by Ben Ames Williams about a fellow who was dad's exact opposite.  This man believed in "traveling light," thus insulating himself against tragedy.  He wanted no excess baggage which might cost him tears.  He lived alone and avoided people, save in a detached sort of way.  He wanted no friends.  Friends could die or get killed and cause one anguish.  This wise man didn't even have a dog.  You could love a dog, too, and dogs had a way of falling victim to disease or dying under automobiles.

   This fellow was tragedy-proof, he figured.  Life moved along on a plane that knew no dips of sorrow or peaks of joy.  But when disaster finally struck, an accident that left him disabled, it hit the jackpot.  There was no wife around to comfort him, no sons, daughters or friends to soften the shock.  All he had was the loneliness he had courted and life became a vast emptiness.

   SOMETIMES, THOUGH, when you take stock of the heartbreak around you and perhaps get brushed by it yourself, you feel that the light traveler has something.  When you see toddlers killed or burned or doomed by disease you ask a lot of bitter, outraged whys.  You wonder if it's all worth the struggle, whether it's smart to have friend and family and affections and exposure to black tomorrows.

   But my father couldn't have gone it alone.  Nobody who pursues happiness can.  Solitude, though it lacks built-in heartache, is intolerable.

   Even a brief experience with it can be difficult.  The family man, when domestic obligations and harassments become particularly galling, may profess to envy the unattached fellow his freedom.  But he doesn't for long.  Let his wife go away for a couple of weeks to visit mother, taking the children with her, and five minutes after they are gone a vague restlessness starts to needle him.

    This is the occasion he has anticipated.  He'll have the boys in for a little game.  He'll have time to catch up on his reading.  He'll come and go as he pleases, with no kids under foot and nobody to tell him that his green tie looks horrible with that blue suit.  He'll have himself a time.

   HE HAS A TIME that is no good whatever.  The house is suddenly big and empty and ominous.  He reads without pleasure, watches television with lackluster eyes.  Having the boys in doesn't seem such a good idea.  He washes down crackers and cheese with coffee and wishes the family were home so he could relax and get on with the bustle of living.

   My father chafed more under such conditions than anyone I ever knew.  And finally, when his children were grown and gone and years and circumstances had left him alone, he took it hard.  Life went out of him before he died because the things he cherished had gone.  But while he had them life, though stern, was good--and he knew it was good. 

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