“That was the moment,” Bridget Jones says in a voiceover in “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” It’s New Year’s Day, and Bridget is throwing a pity party for one. “I suddenly realized that unless something changed soon, I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine, and I’d finally die fat and alone, and be found three weeks later, half-eaten by a pack of wild dogs.”
We’ll come back to dying alone, without the wild dogs, in a moment.
But as I traveled here and there among these surveys, polls, and studies, an item on one list struck me as unique: the fear of dying alone.
But here’s the thing for those fretting over this end game: I doubt you fear dying alone so much as you fear living alone. And by alone, I don’t mean that you lack relatives who love you or friends you treasure. No—if you’re worried about dying alone, I think it’s more likely you’re afraid you’ll go your entire life without bumping hips with someone in the kitchen every evening, or whispering at 2 a.m.: “No, honey. It’s your turn to get the baby,” or melting when some dimpled toddler calls you Mommy for the first time.
Lots of online articles and discussions center on the trials suffered by millennials as they search for the right partner, and I don’t doubt that truth. Romance in our culture has gone into exile, though it’s there and real if you look for it. And yes, committing to another is a huge decision, and yes, again, that means compromise and hard work.
But whatever happens, whether we find a mate or remain single, it’s not dying alone that should frighten us. It’s whether or not we’ve truly lived.
Cheryl Strayed writes advice columns under the name of Sugar. A man calling himself Johnny wrote to her about his fear of love, asking: “When is it right to take the big step and say I love you? And what is this ‘love’ thing all about?”
After offering encouragement, Sugar advises Johnny to be brave and authentic, and to “practice saying the word ‘love’ to people [he loves] so when it matters the most to say it, [he] will.”
“We’re all going to die, Johnny,“ she concludes. ”Hit the iron bell like it’s dinnertime.”