THE fragility and conclusion of life are fated, but it is not sensible or mandated to force its hand. The frequency of men living alone who die alone, some found days after, is too common. Positive and negative properties combine everything that yields life, thus “it takes two to tango” as the song implies. Over the past four weeks, I experienced my elder brother who lived alone, found dead. Next was a friend who lived alone-in denial of the woman he should have been with, in self-imposed solitude-took ill and died. Now an acquaintance from the arcade was found in his home with the wardrobe that he seemed to have clutched in desperation on his dead body. He too lived alone and died alone. Had there been someone else who cared, he may have lived. This is more frequent with males than with women- this self-imposed retreat to hermitage.This is a conversation I have had with friends; indeed, I did have it with two of the mentioned, and a friend from Leopold Street who sold precious stones under Demico. He, too, was found by his daughter days after, among others. The list is extensive of men who live alone and die alone; the question I asked is why? An answer each time that I could have predicted, not only men mature, and with maturity are ingrained the memories of the years, experienced and witnessed. Earlier this year I had a conversation out of concern with a one-time popular boxer from a “roots” area about living alone. He replied, asking me if I knew a certain popular woman from the old picnic days. He said they had conversations about that, but she had grown children who still hung on mommy as permanent dependants, he questioned: “ How duh gon wuk out eh? Me lil cheese gon got fuh feed all ah dem, cause like she can’t tell dem move on, some got children too, yuh know?“ I couldn’t imagine to myself how that will work. Their positions will impose, envelop and lead that relationship into purgatory. This is a man’s conversation that both genders can learn from. Men like to say that we did well in the “bachie” days living alone. It’s a stupid argument. We were young men, we ate during work, cooked in the afternoon or ate at the then girlfriend. We were hardly alone, a night or two we may not have slept home the whole night, or later as ‘that’ relationship evolved, slept with authorised company. The era of young men falling in and out of love and experiencing the fundamental broken heart obviously grieving; then taunted out of heart-break by the primitive counselling methods of peers is much more different from the mature man somewhat accustomed to stability, who finds himself alone and needs companionship more than the sensual quest.

I had three experiences that indicated why we should not live alone. I was a freelance graphic artist at the Chronicle and trying to develop my graphic arts cultural industry, and also was assigned to the Walter Roth Museum in training as a Scientific Artist, and learning the methodology of Social Anthropology and I had a baby daughter and bills to clear. There’s this thing about being young and an illusion of having Demigod qualities. It ended one evening when I arrived home (I was living in a room on Lamaha Street. I had rented from the late Eileen Cox next to Dr. Hanoman). I took off my clothes intending to have a bath, fell into a doze and was awoken by a sharp pain in the mid-section. I never felt pain like that before. I couldn’t stand or raise my torso. The pain held me in a bent position; though phones were not prevalent back then, that house had a phone. I crawled on my all fours and called Donna, explaining what was happening. I wanted somebody to know that I was dying. She replied that I wasn’t going to die. It was “wind pain.” Up to then, I had no idea what that was, it seemed like forever, but she arrived with clothes for a few days and two items she identified as hot water bags. This continued for gruelling days. Had I been alone without communication and someone to call, I very well could have died. The next incident happened one night. I came off the drawing table, my buddy Andrew Anderson was there, looking at sketches for ‘The shadow of the Jaguar,’ so I went upstairs to urinate and all I realised was that I was looking at the toilet bowl from the floor up. Donna called out for Doctor Hanoman after I had recovered with the help of friends. The doctor said that I was lucky I didn’t smoke anything or drank liquor, or I would have been playing with fire.

He said that when he got up between 01:00hrs-02:00hrs, I was still at my drawing table, it was located at the window, arm’s length for description, and there I was at 05:30hrs heading for the seawall for the start of the day run. Again, there were people around to ensure that I am here today. The place is hot, climate change is real today, we are dehydrated faster, we work harder, we are constantly fighting extremely stressful situations, do not eat on time, nor are concerned with what we eat, nor do we give our body the required rest it needs. We don’t have the money for frequent medical check-ups, doing the mentioned and living alone is definitely not sensible. Habits such as alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine and stuff like Viagra, with any of the mentioned living or not living alone, is playing Russian Roulette.