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The Company of Loss 

 

Richard Lala December 2025 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has become apparent to me that it’s probably better to avoid liking things too much. Don’t get used to stuff…don’t get too comfortable, because the enjoyments of life are all too often taken away. I realise we can’t take it with us when we’re gone, but can we not at least continue to enjoy them while we’re still here? Is life just an endless lesson on how to lose things? Accept loss as a part of life, shrug it off, and let things go? I am reminded of the well known biblical metaphor, from Jesus himself. 

 

“Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

 

I'm sitting in my local Weatherspoon’s writing this. I often come in here after work and order a Mocha (a coffee hot chocolate drink). The barman hands me the empty mug, I smile and walk to the machine but the usual option is not there. I enquire at the bar, I don’t go into details of the simple enjoyments of my life…and how these seemingly insignificant perks are enough to keep my keel from submerging into the depths of depressive despair. His boss informs me dismissively that they are no-longer offering the ‘Mocha’ option because there’s been such a nuisance with the hot chocolate dispenser. My smile collapses and my future implodes the skull as all comforting bridges to pleasure seemingly crumble all at once in every direction. 

 

You’d think I would be used to disappointment, as the ‘New Normal’ reality, gestated from the fears of viruses, and birthed from the isolated labour of lockdown, would have prepared me significantly for a future of mundane, obedient and submissive non-fulfilment? Why do I have to always reject the Tyrants’ plans? Where does this rebellious streak in me come from? A determined voice for justice. A champion against the grievous nature of loss and injustice. 

 

There was a Shawlands teahouse I once frequented, called, ‘Tchai-Ovna, South’. It was just the sort of bohemian space I love; no matching furniture, seating on different levels and an ambiance that suited the music of Billie Holiday and the likes of Mazzy Star and Angus and Julia Stone. I’d sip my Indian or Chinese tea with incense smoke scenting through the air, and there, while outsiders played Dungeons & Dragons, down there, I’d drink my poetry songs…until, of course, like the roll of the dice, it was gone, closed, turned into a laundrette! I loved that tearoom, I’ll never forget its homemade soup, crusted, chewy bread, olive humous and buttered scones. 

 

I shouldn’t dwell on it, wallow in the misery of loss, like when my dad died and I had to transition into the realisation that our physical time together was gone. It’s been three years and the pain, rather than fading, grows into an ever deepening root, a stake driven ever deeper into my heart. My tears have dried into a desert of salt that itches deeper than nails can scratch. Do I pray, do I kneel here in the dust and clay and rock and sway begging to hear his voice again…someday? My eyes redden from dismay, my heart is a rock now, a stone too heavy to skiff, how many times can I skip over this before the iron in my blood weights me to morose and all rots away? 

 

They say, ‘it helps to talk about it’… I remember when the doctor came into the family waiting room, spoke the words so soft and low and the walls constricted around us as my mother fell into my arms and we shook our heads into one another’s shoulders in disbelief, beggared in our pain, as our world collapsed in on us. Please, no… Rewind the time! Don’t let it be so… We’re not ready to let him go. But no mortal kindness can tell the Angel, no. There is no appeal that Death can hear, regardless of poetry or words spoken so clean and clear from the breaking heart sincere. 

 

The family came and spoke words of condolence, sentiments I’d used the same on other dear ones facing the similar cliché of pain, but their lessons shared were all in vain, all but one, a can’t recall her name but she looked me deeply in my eyes and like a digging tweezer simply stated. ‘Despite what they tell you, it doesn’t get easier.’ That was the truest thing anyone ever said to me. It doesn’t get any easier. Time does what time does best, buries the past in piles of forgetting sand. But, no matter what you tell yourself, the longer they’re gone is the longer they’re gone. 

 

“Don’t cry yourself to sleep, for I’ll see you in your dreams.”

 

So I’m sitting here tormented by treasured memories, sipping my horrible coffee and contemplating the future. Your health is your wealth as anyone with a cough, unable to swallow without pain, will tell you. Hold onto what you still have, cherish the ever shortening time you’ve got, and try to avoid dwelling on what you’ve not! I swap my rancid coffee for a whisky and stagger home in drunken melancholy. Because, no matter what we may tell ourselves, to pass the day till nights last breath, in this oneway-ticket world, nothing’s forever…except death.