It isn't natural for a man to live alone. By nature man is a social animal. Like all animals, he is suspicious of his neighbors but would rather live in their company than be faced with living alone. But as a man grows old relatives and friends drop away one by one. The kids are gone, his wife may be gone and his neighbors may move on or pass on leaving him as a survivor and the sole keeper of their memory.
So it is with me. The only voice in this old house is mine. It is rarely used except to swear when the sink overflows or the phone rings in the middle of a shower. It is a house that has witnessed many voices in the past. Only their echoes remain. I hear them at night...in the middle of the night. They are still from dawn to dark-but night, deep night, is the time for voices of the past.
They no longer frighten me...they are friendly voices...voices I know well. When I first heard them I was apprehensive-they might have been voices reproaching me for things I did or didn't do. I could hear them upstairs in my daughter's old bedroom-from the den where my wife would sit and watch for the arrival of the first robin. I would rise from my restless bed, gather my shabby robe about me and hunt for their source in vain, but they were fleeting-they scattered and left me with a feeling of guilt that would last until morning. I have learned to live with them.
They are bound to the four walls of this old house-the house that first heard them, and I often wonder if they speak when I am not here. If someone else were here would they speak to them?
I keep these voices to myself. Old men must be cautious. If they confide such strange and secret things to their children it might lead to the end of what little freedom remains. "The old man's hearing things-he shouldn't be left to live alone." Therefore I tell no one. But if they were here I'm sure they would hear them too. I am confidant that one day there will be voices in their house...voices of their children...voices of their past.
Nothing we do or say can be undone. The record lingers, and once done or said it will return to bring you grief and joy to the end of your days. The better you are, the more joy in remembering.
©Harry Buschman 1997