A Piedmont Porchlight Story

People use the words alone and lonely like they mean the same thing. They don’t. Not even close. I learned that lesson a long time ago.

Oddly enough, I learned it at Magnolia Mortuary. Now, you might think a funeral home would be the loneliest place in town. Most folks do. Truth is, it wasn’t. Lord no, not by a long shot.

Some afternoons I’d find myself there by myself. The phone wasn’t ringing. The flower deliveries had all been made. That beautiful Packard hearse sat polished and quiet beneath the porte-cochère. Sunlight filtered through the magnolia trees and danced across the front windows.

I was alone. Never lonely. There was too much life wrapped up inside those walls. Too many stories. Too many memories. Too many reminders that love has a way of lingering long after voices grow quiet.

Then I’d walk over to the Coffee Cup. Every booth full. Every chair occupied. Forks clinking against plates. Coffee cups being topped off every thirty seconds. Laughter bouncing off the walls. And every now and then, I’d notice somebody sitting in the middle of all that company, looking lonely enough to break your heart.

It’s a strange thing. You can be surrounded by people and still feel like nobody sees you. Or you can sit by yourself on a front porch with nothing but a mockingbird and a cup of coffee and feel perfectly content.

The difference isn’t company. It’s connection. I used to visit an old fellow named Mr. Lawson after his wife passed. His children worried about him living alone. So did half the town. One afternoon I stopped by to see how he was getting along. He was sitting on his porch shelling butterbeans into a blue enamel bowl.

“How you doing?” I asked.

He smiled. “Fine.”

“You getting lonely?”

He thought about it a moment. “No. I miss her every day. But missing somebody and being lonely ain’t the same thing.”

That answer has stayed with me for years. After all, every time he shelled butterbeans, she was there. Every recipe in the kitchen carried her handwriting. Every flower in the yard had been planted by her hands. Every room held a conversation they’d shared.

He wasn’t living without her. He was living among everything they’d built together. That’s different. Now don’t misunderstand me. Real loneliness exists. I’ve seen it.

Sometimes it shows up in a crowded restaurant. Sometimes in a hospital waiting room. Sometimes in a house where the television stays on all day because silence feels too heavy. Loneliness isn’t measured by how many people are around you. It’s measured by how disconnected you feel from them.

Connection. Now that’s another matter. Connection is Curtis Pope remembering how you like your hair cut. It’s Hattie pouring your coffee before you ask. It’s somebody waving from a passing pickup just because they’ve known you since third grade. It’s Miss Eleanor leaving the porch light on for anybody who might need it. It’s Walter’s empty booth reminding everybody that ordinary faithfulness leaves extraordinary footprints. It’s a little Mason jar of flowers on a depot bench. It’s a scruffy old dog named Jake lying beside a child who doesn’t need words.

Funny thing is, none of those people ever set out to cure loneliness. They were simply kind. Kindness has a funny way of building bridges nobody notices until they need to cross one. These days I spend a fair amount of time by myself. That’s one of the privileges of getting older. I rather enjoy it.

I can sit on the porch for an hour listening to the wind move through the pecan trees and call that an afternoon well spent. I’m alone. But I’m never really by myself. Not with all these memories keeping me company. Not with freight trains still singing through the night. Not with Mawmaw’s quilt folded across the back of my chair. Not with old friends whose laughter somehow still echoes every time I walk into the Coffee Cup.

No. I don’t reckon I’m lonely. I’ve simply been loved too well for that. And when you’ve spent a lifetime gathering people like that, you come to understand something worth remembering. Being alone is where you happen to be. Being lonely is where you believe nobody would notice if you weren’t.

If you can leave this world having made even one person feel seen, one person feel welcomed, one person feel like they belonged, then you’ve done something mighty important.

Because you’ve given them the one thing that chases loneliness away.

Not company.

Belonging.