Invisible Man

My sister sent me a note this morning informing me of a death.

The mother of a high-school girlfriend died last week. The lady was a superb human being. She showed me many things about how to live a patient, virtuous life. I wish I could say that I have consistently applied the lessons I learned from her. But I can say that my life was and is enriched by having known her.

Truth is, I’m reeling from the news of this lady’s death. My reaction is unoriginal but completely genuine: each passing year brings the news of more deaths, more people I once knew who have passed from this life. I’m not unsettled by the idea of my own mortality. Rather, I’m unnerved by how predictably life is unspooling before me. I am aging. My peers are dying. Most dreams were never realized, nor goals achieved. My vices have entrenched themselves, my virtues have faded. Things I once believed are strange to me now; ideas I once shunned now hold my interest. The country in which I grew up is a different land now. The people I once saw as trustworthy now mostly have my contempt. And I have become invisible.

I can remember when I realized that I had become invisible. One day in my forties, my wife and I went to see a movie at a mall in Houston, Texas. We strolled through the mall before the movie started, and I was bothered by something about the people in the place. I could not name it, but I was aware of the sense of being unsettled.

Before we went into the cineplex, I ducked into the public restroom, a large, gleaming place. The ceilings were opened via skylights, and the intense sunlight poured in. As I stood washing my  hands at the sink, I looked in the mirror and noticed how the sun was beaming directly onto me, like a Super Trouper at a rock concert. And for the first time, I noticed how silver my hair was getting.

That’s when the mental clouds parted. That was it.

I realized that what had unsettled me during our mall stroll was the fact that so few younger people made any sort of eye contact with me. Why, I wondered? And then I thought, Why would they? When I was younger, did I notice older people? Did I really see them? And I knew the answer. Older people were completely invisible to me for the most part, because they possessed nothing of interest for me (family members mostly excepted). I realized at that moment that I had become invisible.

Perhaps this mortal invisibility is a precursor to the true invisibility that occurs when we die and leave this earth. A foretaste of the sad fact that even those we love the most will fade from our memories with time’s relentless flow.

So as I drove to work in the freezing dark this morning, I thought of the dear lady who had died, and what she had meant to me. I wondered if, at my death, some younger person will remember me with fondness and respect. I wondered when I will become truly invisible in this world.

So much of life is predictable. We can see it coming. Do we want to see it coming?

~ S.K. Orr