A Short List on a Long Night

The bar at the Hyatt Regency was swanky, but deserted. Not quite the Saturday crowd I had expected in Kerala’s capital city, a place I still call home even after years in Toronto. “Perhaps, the regular crowd was yet to shuffle in,” I mentally gave a nod to the Piano Man, Billy Joel, as I settled in with a beer. My wife was under the weather and was happy to stay in and leave me be to have a night by myself. So there I was—plonked in a lounge chair, alone with my thoughts, feeling that sudden, sharp urge to talk to a friend.

But as the saying goes, there are friends and then there are friends. Very few are insiders. No one knows everything about another. Some come close, but few bridge the gap entirely. In my mind, I ran a finger down the list of people who would be happy to receive a call from me out of the blue. The list was short. The first person on that list was no longer an option; he had made the transition to the other side. As in dead.

As I took a gulp and looked around at the empty seats, I felt a pang of guilt. I had a list, albeit short. I could think of a few who didn’t—people trapped in their own little worlds, craving support and companionship but stuck in a reality they didn’t choose. It made me realize that the burden of loneliness isn’t always about being physically alone; it’s about the weight of what we cannot share.

The Sounds of Silence

I thought of a close relative in a quiet house a few blocks away, keeping watch over a husband whose mind has become a labyrinth she can no longer navigate. She is surrounded by well-meaning relatives and neighbors, but empathy isn’t a presence. There is a suffocating loneliness in being a caregiver—living in the quiet shadows of another’s needs, where your own identity is shelved to make room for the crisis at hand.

Then there are those living behind a perfect veneer—the people in marriages that died a decade ago, staying for the kids, the mortgage, or the way the neighbors look at them. Their loneliness is the cold spot on the other side of a king-sized bed, a 24-hour act where ‘everything is fine’ while their heart is miles away.

And the man, mourning the unexpected loss of a wife who had pampered him to the point of total reliance. He is surrounded by the ghosts of her care—the neatly folded laundry, the stocked pantry—but he has no one to call to share the quiet panic of the everyday—the realization that he no longer knows how to navigate a world she once mapped out for him.

The drink appeared to be working; I felt my eyes well up as I remembered Maroon 5’s lyrics:

“Toast to the ones here today 

Toast to the ones that we lost on the way 

‘Cause the drinks bring back all the memories 

And the memories bring back, memories bring back you…”

Bearing the Cross

But memories aren’t always a toast to the good times. Sometimes they’re a reminder of the things we can never say out loud—the jagged, private loneliness of the secret-keeper. I thought of the people who lack that one, non-judgmental soul they can truly talk to. A confidant, not just for the easy, light-filled parts of our lives, but for our transgressions. I pictured those carrying a hidden love, or a mistake that has settled into their bones like lead—living behind a permanent filter, their cross to bear!

I remember how it felt a while back when I was the one carrying the weight of someone else’s transgression. It is a specific, heavy kind of isolation. You aren’t just holding a secret; you are holding a wall that you didn’t build, but now have to maintain. You become an island of one, unable to share the burden because the truth doesn’t belong to you.

The Saturday Night Disconnect

“Another beer, Sir?” It was the barman who had left me with my quiet contemplations until then. Nodding yes, I pulled out my phone and started dialing. The responses were warm, but the timing was off. Through the receiver, I could hear the clinking of glasses and the hum of dinner parties. They were in the middle of their Saturday night routines. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, and I hung up before the conversation could get heavy. How do you pivot from “How’re things?” to the crushing weight of isolation while your friend is topping up wine glasses?

But then, my pocket buzzed.

It was a call back from one of the friends I’d just spoken to. He had stepped away from the noise. “Hey,” he said. “I caught a tinge of something in your voice. Is everything cool?”

“Everything’s cool,” I told him. And in that moment, I truly meant it.

I didn’t offload my thoughts right then; I didn’t need to. The fact that he had tuned his ear to that slight “tinge”—that he had stepped out of his own life to check my pulse—was enough. It was a reminder that I still had a list. We would find the time for the real talk soon enough.

As I walked out into the cool night air, I felt a profound sense of luck. For many others—the caregivers, the secret-keepers, the performers—there is no call back. There is only the long, quiet walk home. I headed back to my wife, grateful for the friend who knew how to hear the silence between my words.