HERO: L. MAE CLAIR

LONELINESS

Several years ago I received a letter almost every month from a woman who lived in another city. We had never met. She read articles I wrote for the Plain Dealer and commented on them. I don’t know how old my pen pal was at the time, and I never asked. From the context of her letters, I guessed that she was in her late sixties or early seventies.

One day she sent me an Ann Landers column featuring a letter from a woman in Alabama who was opposed to exchanging valentines in school because so many children get hurt and left out. The writer said, “The feelings of children are so important and the hurts go so deep.”

The letter from my “pen pal” began, “I too was a big loser in school on Valentine’s Day, and I was one of the last to be chosen for spell downs, and I got beat up on the playground.”

That sentence made me realize that the woman who opposed exchanging valentines was right: “The feelings of children are so important and the hurts go so deep.” She might have added that they last so long–sometimes even a lifetime.

I also realized that some people live in the dark shadows of loneliness most of their lives. I remember a movie I saw over 30 years ago–“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”–starring Alan Arkin, who portrayed John Singer, a likable deaf mute who is always doing good things for people at work or in his neighborhood. No one, however, does good things for Singer. No one tries to identify with his doubts, his fears, his anxieties. Tragically, one day Singer ends his life, a victim of loneliness.

How many lonely people live in our cities. Widows and widowers. Street people. Rejected children. Youth who think drugs and alcohol and sex will cast out the demons of loneliness. Spouses living lives of quiet desperation. Employees whose ethics and values in business, politics, government, education and journalism make them anathema to their co-workers. Frail, elderly people who would welcome death as a companion to take them from their lives of loneliness.

Some years ago I wrote this about loneliness: “Loneliness means to be lost and to have no one care if you are found. It means to have sorrow and to have no one to share your tears. It means to be a stranger and to have no one you can call a friend. It means to be old and infirm and have no one care that this is the final chapter in a book of life that was once young and full of promise. It means to be afraid and to have no one to light your darkness, hold your hand, and calm your fears.”

Or, as my pen pal put it, it means to be a big loser on Valentine’s Day, to be chosen last in a spell down, and to be beat up on the playground.

I lost contact with my pen pal for ten years or more. When she stopped sending me letters, I surmised that she was tired of my liberal philosophy. I have saved most of her letters, which she gave me permission to reprint.

I called the editor of her hometown newspaper and learned that the writer of those letters–L. Mae Clair—had died over five years earlier. I was sorry that I did not have the opportunity to thank her for her words.

I believe this woman could have become an outstanding writer, but she was beaten up not only on the playground but at home as well for her letters to the editor of her hometown newspaper. In one letter to me she wrote, “I am in the desert and find it difficult to write.”

She is no longer alone, no longer in the desert, this lover of words. She is with God, whom the Evangelist Saint John called the Word.

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