Dying Alone

This evening is the end of a three-day weekend here in Ukraine. For me, that means three days of hanging around my apartment by myself, rarely going out, having nothing interesting to do and no one interested in doing it with me – almost no social interaction, save for a bit on Saturday.

Under those circumstances, it’s not unusual for my mind to go off in all kinds of directions. And sometimes, when I feel particularly isolated and alone, I get to thinking about my life here in this country and what would happen if the end comes while I am still here. It’s not pretty.

One of my first posts when I started this blog back in 2012 was called Living Alone. It was a partly humorous and partly serious look at the fact that I was living alone at the time and had been for quite some time before that. Seven years later, I still live alone.

One aspect of living alone that I did not touch on back in 2012 was what would happen if I had a sudden, serious medical problem in my apartment or out on the street somewhere. I got to thinking about it the past couple of days, and in that thinking, I imagined dying alone.

Earlier in my time here, I had a pretty wide circle of acquaintances, and I even had a few people I could legitimately call friends. And for years there was at least one person close enough for me to entrust with a key to my place and who usually also had contact with my landlord. That’s not the case any longer.

The last person who I thought was a real friend and who had a key left Ukraine earlier this year for a new life in southern Europe. The sad thing is that since she left she has not even tried to keep in touch. It’s like our friendship never mattered or perhaps never happened. That stings.

My circle has been shrinking for the past few years, and now it’s pretty much empty. I wrote a post about Circles of Friendship almost five years ago. In that post I described how each of us has several circles around us; on the innermost circle there are the closest people, and there are usually a few more circles with less-close friends, acquaintances, and finally just the mass of strangers all around us. I conceded that at time I didn’t think there was anyone on my innermost circle, and now I am not sure there is really anyone on the next circle or even the one after that.

No One Would Know… or Care

I am truly alone here these days. The reasons don’t really matter, but I suppose it has to do with age more than anything and probably also with ways in which I have changed in the past few years – and not for the better. I came to realize this weekend that if I were suddenly gone, no one would miss me. Days or perhaps weeks could pass before anyone might come looking.

I would be missed at work first, not so much because anyone cared but because it would seem strange after a few days that I wasn’t there to open my room for classes. But even then, I’m not sure how many days would pass before anyone got curious enough to try to figure out where I was. And even if someone did, there is almost no one there who knows where I live or how to get in touch. There is no one who has a key, no one who knows how to contact my landlord. There is no one.

And as for “friends” or acquaintances, there is no one who keeps in touch frequently enough to make a difference. Everyone has either left the country or just dropped me off their radar screens (admittedly, in some cases the “dropping” was mutual). There is no one who has a key, no one who knows how to contact my landlord. There is no one.

It occurred to me that if I had a heart attack or something here at home, that would be it. I would stay where I fell for many days, perhaps even weeks. And then what? When someone did finally find a way to get in and check on me, what would they do with my body? And what would happen to my possessions?

I don’t think there is anyone here who would know how to get in touch with my family or who would even feel moved to do so. I have no close friends here now, so the disposition of my body would likely be some kind of cheap grave and then quickly forgotten.

As for my possessions, the worst thing is imagining that my landlord would simply take everything of value – computer, video and audio gear, bicycle, cash, etc. – simply because he controls the apartment. One of my daughters has access to my U.S. bank account, but the money in my Ukraine bank account could not be accessed by anyone and, ultimately, would probably be kept by the bank.

Another Reason to Go

It’s not a pretty picture. And the more I think about it, the more it tells me that I should leave this place before it becomes a reality. Better to be around or at least close to family in this regard. Of course, things can happen to you anywhere – driving far from home, on a trip someplace far away – but at least spending the majority of your time close to people to whom you matter makes it better.

Of course, once you die, you have no reason to care about what happens to you or your stuff, right? You’re gone, and it’s other people’s problems. So it really shouldn’t matter where or how you die, or what happens with your remains and possessions.

Yet somehow… it does.

------------------------------------------

The Last Time

For every person, there is a first time to do something. And there is a last time.

We celebrate so many of those firsts: the first day of school, the first time driving a car, the first kiss, the first time having sex. We write stories and songs about them. For many of the firsts, we record them forever in photographs or videos (not the first sex, usually).

I still have a fleeting memory of my first day of school so many years ago. I remember being excited and not able to understand why so many other kids were crying and afraid. I remember my first kiss quite clearly, and I also remember my first good kiss (often the two are not the same). My first time potting a goal in a real hockey game is etched in my mind as well.

I will always remember the first girl I fell in "love" with as a teen and how that feeling absolutely carried me away. And I will never forget the pain of the first time I had my heart crushed.

Like so many music lovers, I remember the first time I heard some of my favorite songs and albums. As a kid, I remember listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for the first time and being completely blown away. Some other songs really hit me the first time I heard them: CSN’s Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird, Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way, Phil Collins’s I Don’t Care Anymore, Don Henley’s Heart of the Matter, John Hiatt’s Have a Little Faith in Me, and John Mayer’s Dreaming with a Broken Heart, just to name a few. I have listened to them hundreds of times, but I will always remember the first.

We remember things like the first time flying in a plane, the first time visiting a foreign country, the first time seeing the ocean (unless we went to the ocean all the time practically from birth, as I did), the first time getting drunk (well, we don’t always remember it well), the first time getting a paycheck, and so much more.

First times are so memorable because they bring something new into our lives and often mark significant changes, rites of passage. And they can spark strong emotions, sometimes even explosions of emotion. These first times usually change us in some way; sometimes the ways are small, and sometimes they are huge.

First times more often happen in our childhood, our youth, our early adulthood – times that are the most optimistic in our lives. And they help fuel that optimism, give it form and direction, even when they hurt a bit.

The Last Time

But for every first time, there is also a last time.

We don’t think much about last times, and we don’t celebrate them. And why would we? Last times speak to finality, to reaching the end, and perhaps to death itself. We tend to associate last times with our last years, with diminishing abilities, and often with missed opportunities and regrets.

For most of our lives, we don’t really think about last times because we consider ourselves pretty much immortal and believe that there will, or at least can, always be a “next time.” Besides, we can never really know when the “last time” will really be the last.

Maybe thinking about the last time is a manifestation of getting older, but I do sometimes find myself wondering what song will be the last one I ever hear, what movie might be the last I ever see. I don’t think about this often, but it does cross my mind from time to time.

Have you ever spent time with a person, said goodbye, and wondered if you had just seen that person for the last time? What about other things we do routinely in life? Have you ever had a moment when you haven’t done a particular thing for a while and wondered whether you had done it for the last time ever?

Probably not. As I mentioned, we generally assume there will be a next time, even if we haven’t done that thing for while. But as we get older, the likelihood that there won’t be a next time increases.

Of course, our last times could come at any time. We never know when fate might whisk us away from this life. In this modern age, we are more likely than ever before to make it into our 70s, 80s or even our 90s. And some people get to those ripe old ages in pretty good condition, so they manage to extend their next times beyond when many would have had their last times.

But we all know of people who passed away in their 20s or 30s, or sometimes even earlier. Sometimes their first time is their last time. Sometimes they never have a first time at all.

The point is that we really never know when the last time will be. If you haven’t kissed a woman for some time, you might still be confident that there will be a next time. Or you might look at your life and conclude that you truly have already experienced the last time.

The last time I saw my mother, I had no idea that it really would be the last time. Several years passed as I lived in Colorado and she had become increasingly ill in Massachusetts. I also didn’t imagine that the last time we spoke on the phone before Christmas would be the last time we would talk, as she went into a coma shortly after New Year and passed away six months later. Of course, if we could know these things, we would react differently. But we can’t know.

When I was in my early 20s, I had a best friend when I was stationed on Guam. Frank and I were like brothers, and when my time on the island was up and I left, I naively assumed we would meet up again before long. We never did. It was the last time, and I learned a valuable lesson about how fleeting friendship can be.

More and more, I see that I have already had my last times in many things and that in other things, the last time is not far off. I used to run long distances, but knee damage and back problems stopped that. I don’t even remember when the last time was. I never could have imagined that I played my last game of hockey before I was 30 or that when I played softball one summer night almost two decades ago, it was my last time. I will never do those things again.

I am quite sure that I have known love for the last time in my life, and the sad thing is that I never really knew it well. Although I love someone even now, it can never be mutual, I will never feel its warmth. But that’s been my fate, apparently – the lesson I was meant to learn in this life.

The time is probably not far off when I will have driven a car for the last time. Driving is so important to me that to not be able to do that may feel like the last straw, like I am truly done. But it’s not here yet… so there is that.

The other day I said goodbye to a friend after a usual, casual meeting, and for some reason the thought occurred to me that I might have just seen her for the last time. I certainly hope not.

None of us really knows when the last time will be or if it has already occurred. That is the mystery. And I suppose we need that mystery in our lives. Or maybe we need to just not think about it.

I hope this won’t be the last time I will write a blog post.

--------------------------------------

A Short Greek Getaway

There is something special about being on an island.

Not a big island, like Ireland, Britain or Sicily, but a small island where you can see water all around you and feel the smallness of it against the vastness of the ocean or sea. Sao Miguel was special in that way. Guam was special in that way (and in many other ways).

Small coastal islands like Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts, don’t exude the same feeling. You know you are only a short ferry ride from the mainland, so you don’t get that same sensation of an oasis in the midst of watery vastness.

Islands and mountains are my favorite places to get away, to experience some degree of soothing, cleansing isolation. To be honest, I have always found more isolation, more peace, and more spiritual connection in the high country. But islands have something that mountains lack: the power of the sea.

In lieu of that powerful spiritual experience of being in a high mountain valley, a small island surrounded by a sea or ocean will do just fine.

Santorini

As I started this post, I was on a short vacation on the Greek island of Santorini (I finished it back home in Kharkiv). Santorini is part of a vast archipelago stretching across the Aegean Sea from mainland Greece to Turkey. The island is sort of unique in that it was the site of a devastating volcanic eruption somewhere around 1660 BC that sent much of the original island into the sea. There are some legends that claim the lost city of Atlantis was on Santorini and was destroyed in the eruption.

Now the main island is sort of curved around the caldera of the sunken portion, with a still-active volcanic portion in the center of the caldera and another piece located just northwest of the “volcano island.” There was another significant earthquake there in 1956, so people there have to a bit “on their toes” with regard to Mother Nature.

Santorini is one of the more developed islands in the archipelago, which makes it a real tourist trap from April to October, and especially during the summer. But I arrived in early March when the temperatures are pleasant, if not particularly warm, and there are very few tourists.

Just the way I like it: not hot, and not a lot of people. I was able to enjoy my time in T-shirts and shorts and without a lot of people invading my calm space.

So this post is about my four days on Santorini. I honestly don’t know where this post will go; it might be something of a travelogue, like my posts about my 2016 Portugal trip, or it might wander off into something else entirely. The point is to get writing again, something that I let slide very badly in 2018.

A Few Rants

I’ll get a couple of negative points off my chest first and be done with them.

Are there any more obnoxious and annoying tourists today than the Chinese? You’re in some relatively quiet, natural place and then you hear someone yakking loudly into a phone. You turn around and, sure enough, he is Chinese.

On my first full day, I wanted to take a photo of a small monastery building that was framed by red rock behind it. It would have been a perfect picture if some Chinese tourists hadn’t suddenly pulled up and parked their car in front the building, right in the center of my photo. Everyone else had parked in another area across from the building. They got out of the car, looked right at me holding my camera, then got their stuff from the car and walked away, leaving the car right there to ruin the shot.

Yes, there are words for such people, but this is a family blog.

The owner of the place I stayed at overnight near the Athens airport before I want to Santorini told me that of all the guests he has had to deal with over the years from almost every country imaginable, the Chinese have been the most arrogant and condescending. “They expect you to carry their bags for them, like a servant,” he told me.

I wasn’t surprised.

Windrose Airlines sucks. That about says it all.

Why is it that the so-called “smart cars,” the smallest cars on the road, can’t seem to stay on their own side of the street? It’s weird that the cars I met coming the other way that were most likely to be taking up part of my lane were these mini-midgetmobiles.

Greeks smoke a lot, and they often do it in restaurants and cafes. Believe it or not, Ukraine is actually ahead of the curve on limiting smoking in public buildings by comparison. I really hate cigarette smoke!

The Offseason

Touring a place like Santorini in the offseason is really a treat – unless you actually like crowds, traffic and long waits. I was able to enjoy driving on the island, especially in the south, because the traffic was light to nonexistent. But I did experience a bit of traffic in and around the main towns of Fira and Oia, so I can imagine what it must be like in the high season when this popular resort destination is choked with throngs of visitors.

At the tourist spots, there were few tourists and sometimes none at all. There were those occasional Chinese, however. I saw many huge tour buses parked in a few places on the island, but I only encountered a couple of them on the road. I can imagine what it must be like trying to drive around the island in the high season with exponentially more rental cars and lots of those huge buses on the narrow roads. No thank you!

Sure, it’s not so warm, and swimming was out of the question, but that’s fine for me. I prefer it to be a bit warm but not hot; 15-18 degrees Celsius in the daytime is perfect.

I had lunch one day in a tavern near the famous Red Beach, and for most of that time, I was the only customer. There was a family there when I arrived (from Virginia), and we chatted just a bit. But otherwise, I had the place to myself. Similarly, in the restaurant at the hotel I stayed at, I was the only customer for breakfast or dinner each day.

In the offseason, you get a better sense of how people really live. Locals are more open, and because they have fewer guests to deal with, they can take a little more time with you. And they do. I had some really interesting chats with the owners of the place I was staying at, Villa Michalis, and a few other places I stopped at.

At one little beachside café, the host asked me where I was from, and when I told him I had come from Ukraine, he started speaking Russian. He wanted to practice, and it was sort of funny to have two people trying to communicate in quite poor Russian. But at least for me it was enjoyable to speak Russian with someone who made my level seemed pretty good by comparison.

Life on Santonini in the offseason seems devoted largely to repairing and freshening up the facilities in preparation for the tourist season. In many places I saw workers renovating verandas and other structures that will be filled with tourists in just a few short months. And not all of the restaurants and cafes were even open. There was one Greek restaurant that I had read about and was looking forward to trying, a place called “Salt and Pepper” in Fira, but it was closed until April.

A popular, developed island like Santorini is never going to give you that feeling of isolation and quiet, but at least in the offseason you can find some quiet spots to get away and find some peace. I suspect this simply is not true in the high season.

The Sun Comes Up – The Sun Goes Down

Only on an island can you catch the sunrise and sunset over the sea on the same day. Of the two, the sunrise might be more inspiring You have to make the effort to get up early if you want to catch it, and it’s the birth of a new day, the beginning of your day, rather than the end.

But I like them both.

Very often in Colorado in the summer, we get gorgeous bursts of color as the sun drops down behind the mountain peaks, and those are some of the most beautiful sunsets I can recall. But when the sun sets into the sea or ocean, and there is just the right combination of clear sky with just a few clouds toward the horizon, it is magnificent.

I managed to catch a stunning sunset on my first evening. It was from a lighthouse on the southwest corner of the island. The next morning was completely cloudy, so I didn’t bother getting up for the sunrise, but I did go to a nearby beach on the southeast side for the next morning’s sunrise. It was a perfect sunrise, but my pictures came out much less than perfect for some reason. I was very disappointed. But I rectified that a few days later by catching a beautiful sunrise from my hotel balcony in the mainland port of Rafina.

Anata-wa Nihon-jin Desu Ka?

I mentioned earlier about the rather abrasive Chinese tourists. In contrast, however, I was delighted on a couple of occasions to run into some Japanese visitors. Of course, I lived in Japan for six years, so I have a great appreciation for the Japanese people, and I consider the Japanese language to be one of the world’s more beautiful languages – much more so than Chinese.

On my last full day on Santorini, I decided to have lunch in a little pizzeria, and I chose a table by a window with a nice view of the caldera. Shortly after I sat down, two girls came in and sat behind me. They seemed polite and were talking quietly with each other. But after a few minutes, I realized they were speaking Japanese.

After a while, I decided to ask them – in Japanese – if they were from Japan. They were quite surprised – and pleased – to hear someone speak to them in their own language, and we had a brief conversation (in English, of course, because my Japanese is far worse even than my Russian). Then I left them to enjoy their lunch together, but made a point to say goodbye and wish them well in Japanese when I left.

To add to the Japan-related coincidences, the person sitting next to me on my return flight from Santorini to Athens was a young guy from Japan. We had a very nice conversation during the short flight (in English).

The Joy of Driving

One of the things I enjoyed most about my time on the island was driving around. I rented a small Peugeot to get around and enjoyed it a lot. It was a very simple car without all the bells and whistles that my rentals in Portugal or the UK had, but on a tiny island where no place is more than a 40-minute drive from anyplace else, you don’t need a GPS or advanced audio system.

Driving is one ofthe greatest joys of my life, but in Ukraine, I don’t drive at all. So for the past 10 years or so, the only chances to drive have been when I’ve been on vacation, and during my UK vacation in July I left most of the driving to my daughter. So it was a real pleasure to be behind the wheel, especially in a place where there was almost no traffic and no stress.

Not Really My Kind of Place

I enjoyed my four short days on Santorini, but it’s not a place I would pine to return to. It’s an arid island, as are most of the islands in the Aegean, I guess, which just makes it less attractive. And it’s quite developed, meaning there are not so many places where you can just get away from people and enjoy a natural environment. I managed to find a few spots, but during the high season, I imagine that even these would have tourists swarming about.

My favorite island getaway, thus far, remains Sao Miguel. It’s one place I might like to return to someday, and it would be interesting to check out some of the smaller islands in the Azores. Although Sao Miguel does get a fair amount of tourists in the high season, you can still find plenty of lush, beautiful places. I imagine that the other islands would also be very green, but with fewer people. Santorini, on the other hand, seems like the kind of place that is never really lush or green.

Still, Santorini is a nice place, and I really liked the people. For those who like warm water, sunny beaches, good food, and some ancient history, it can be a great destination – as long as you don’t mind sharing with a few thousand other tourists in the high season.

But I won’t be going back. It’s time to start thinking about a totally different summer vacation.

----------------------------------------