“….WHERE DO THEY ALL BELONG?”

By Edwin Cooney

“Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been

Lives in a dream

Waits at the window, wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door

Who is it for?

All the lonely people

Where do they all come from?

All the lonely people

Where do they all belong?"

Those questions, framed in the Lennon/McCartney 1966 ballad “Eleanor Rigby” came to mind recently as two friends and I were discussing the fates of various people, great and small, known and unknown.  To my mind then and now comes forth knowledge of too many people seemingly unacknowledged, and even worse, seemingly unloved -- not for what they’ve done, but for who they are.

Her name was Loretta.  She was deaf, blind, and nearly mute.   She could speak, but only in a whisper.  She was a contemporary of mine, a day student at my residential school.  I knew of her in class, but nowhere else.  Hopefully, her family adored and protected her, but my guess is that many of her contemporaries never knew her or weren’t sufficiently capable of allowing Loretta to share herself with them.  If Loretta wasn’t one of those “lonely people,” she certainly was isolated enough to be lonely!

Ronnie was a cottage mate while I was living in one of two orphanages.  Orphanages, like many institutions of asylum for the disabled or the unwanted, although far from being dens of misery, could be mighty cold places to live.  Ronnie, as I remember him, was more mischievous than he was bad, but he was almost constantly in trouble.  A bit of a runt, he was almost continually bullied -- not merely by us boys, but even by the staff.  You’ll never convince me that Ronnie wasn’t lonely, for no matter the situation, if it went wrong, Ronnie was invariably involved.  If someone’s slipper was missing, Ronnie had stolen it, hidden it, or possibly had eaten it.  If Ronnie’s baseball team lost due to an error, Ronnie surely made the error, because God knew he was incapable of hitting the winning home run.  I pray that Ronnie has grown into a wise, loving and reflective adult; otherwise he has plenty of legitimate rage to vent.  Of course, I should have befriended him, but I was too wrapped up in my own interests to take on his.  Hopefully, someone else was ultimately more noble than I!

John, an adult quadriplegic, wasn’t someone I knew.  John was someone whose voice I heard and whose anger took on public notice. I’d encounter John, a victim of cerebral palsy, on one of our local buses or at the Bay Area Rapid Transit System.  John got about in one of those electric wheelchairs.  His voice was sharp and angry sounding.  Bus drivers often complained about his cursing, rudeness, and general lack of gratitude for the help offered him.  Even with all that, I occasionally wondered about the harsh isolation he must have experienced every day.  I thought about the pain, the spasms, and the tremors that likely visited his body daily.  Finally, I wondered what I would be like were I required to suffer as John did. Sometimes I even wondered if anyone had ever put their arms around John at night because they were glad to be near to him.

Billy was a friend of mine.  He lived at the same orphanage as Ronnie and oh! how he longed to be free and to live in a real home!  Billy suffered from childhood diabetes. From the time he was three he knew only institutional living.  About the time Billy turned 16, an older sister was married and was willing to make a home for Billy.  At last, Billy was free of the often oppressive protectiveness of the orphanage.  Finally, he knew freedom -- finally he had a sense of home rather than institutional care giving.  Finally he was free to eat that which tasted so good because it was so sweet and…then, suddenly, Billy was lonely no more.  Suddenly, Billy was forever free of everything from pain to loneliness.  The freedom that had lifted his loneliness concealed his need for self-discipline and caused him to ignore the delicacy of his very mortality. 

As is often the case with people who are unfamiliar, we’re often prone to making assumptions about the lonely among us.  Lonely people must be homeless, poor, friendless, old, ill, disabled, have lots of time on their hands, and so on. Ah, but the lonely are often the creative, the productive, the busy, the popular, the devoted, the religious, the good and even the beautiful.  Their names can be Loretta, Ronnie, John, Billy, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley or even Lyndon Johnson.

So, what of  “….all the lonely people?  Where do they all come from?  Where do they all belong?”

Unlikely as it may seem, all the lonely people come from you and me.  They belong in our hearts and in our prayers.

Among those lonely people may even be…you and me!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY