Single Occupancy

The best part of my day used to be bedtime, when my husband and I, touching toes in the darkness, would whisper about his day, my day, silly little things we experienced and wanted to share with each other. Now…I can call friends. I can write in a journal. I can exercise like a fiend. But yearning for more can become a palpable physical ache.

Men seem to fear laundry, cooking and cleaning. They keenly feel the lack of a live-in girlfriend or roommate with whom to share the household chores. A male friend admitted to his terror of (his capitalization), "NO FOOD IN THE REFRIGERATOR!"

Women are more attuned to physical ailments. That urban legend of the woman who died and wasn't found for days, her cats feeding on her face? That could be us… It's not death we fear so much as an accident where, if someone had been around, we could have been saved—but weren't. "If anything happened to me, there's no one here to know I'm in trouble," one friend told me. "Having someone break in when I'm home," another friend shared. And, if the elevator breaks, "I worry about the future. If I'm ever in a wheelchair, how would I get upstairs, or down?"