On Being Old & Lonely: Picky Pam and Two-A-Day Tom

In the spirit of this posting, I searched the term "lonely" on google images, and placed throughout the story are some of the photos that I came across.

It's what each of us fears most, being alone. And yet, if you look around you, so many of us do end up that way. I find that I look towards my own future and the possibility of spending a great majority of my mature years by myself, and instead of accepting it, I deny, deny, deny. I'll have a life partner and he won't die first. Or, I'll have lots of children...children who will be content spending significant amounts of time with their old, lonely Dad.

But then I think of my grandmother, who lost her oldest of two daughters (my mother) to breast cancer, and who lost her husband two years later to heart failure. She, a woman who spent her life giving her entire self to her family, spent these past eight years sitting abandoned, re-watching episodes of Little House on the Prairie, welcoming any distraction no matter how familiar it is. There are, however, things I believe my grandmother, had she pushed herself to do so, could have done to better surround herself with peers and friends so as not to feel so utterly alone. She could have joined a book club - she reads more than anyone I know. She could have worked some kind of desk job that her bum knee would not have prevented her from being able to do. At Cafe Roman, we have two extreme regulars, who, like my grandmother, are elderly and alone. Every day they come in, both with their own quirks, ready to visit their respective surrogate families of waiters.


Mr. Buchmann, or as we compassionately refer to him, "Two-A-Day Tom," comes at least twice a day to Cafe Roman. Unlike other regulars such as "Iced tea lady," (who only ever orders a glass of iced tea and the Roman Burger) he varies what he orders. Not to mention, Buchmann is part of a rare few who comes multiple times a day, while other, less hardcore regulars like "Iced tea lady" come once or twice a week. Best of all, he thoroughly reads the menu twice every day, and not once has he failed to wear the look of someone who is sitting down for the first time at what is sure to become one of his favorite places to eat. He has a slight hunch, one that reveals his quiet sadness. Tom has a way about him that leads me to believe he was never fit to be alone, and never expected to be. Because of that, I feel a personal tie with him, like he offers some kind of calm warning about what the future could hold in store. When I take time to talk to him, his eyes light up in this mesmerizing way that almost seems to take fifteen years off his face. He really listens, and without failure, he will remember the details I choose to share with him about my life. Columbia, hip-hop dancing, writing, Ghana - Mr. Buchmann knows it all and now that I'm one of his surrogate children, he always takes care of me. He leaves at least a 30% tip no matter what, and adds, "Put that towards your first book," or "This is for Columbia!" He won't leave until I've picked up the check, and so if I get busy, he waits patiently, sipping on his Torcolato desert wine, pleasantly drunk (we are only supposed to serve him one glass of wine and one Torcolato). I never withhold a glass or two extra, because as far as I'm concerned, the man has earned his right to take the edge off. And besides, he lives in the building...it isn't like he is going to put himself or anyone else in danger in his drunken trudge back to his apartment.

Pam is a whole other story. Pam has an auburn/orange quaffed hair-do that is reminiscent of Sylvia on the Golden Girls. She walks with a certain urgency that is void of the typical New Yorker's "get out of my way" urgency, but filled instead with the kind of urgency that leads one to believe she might start violently attacking people in a completely arbitrary manner. Pam is notorious for telling phony managers to "fuck off" or "quit being a fake piece of shit." She doesn't hold back, ever. Every day, Pam strolls in, grabs the seating chart, and evaluates where in the restaurant she wants to sit, and more importantly, who she wants her server to be. I used to look at Pam's daily charade through judgmental eyes. I used to think Pam was just another nasty customer with her own especially annoying quirks (she will actually turn around and leave the restaurant if she is not in the mood to be served by any of the waiters on the floor). Lately, I've come to refer to myself as "Pam's last resort." We get long fine, each of us amping up our already sarcastic selves to keep the other laughing. I'll usually open with, "Wow Pam...must have been slim pickings today, huh?" She'll usually shrug, roll her eyes, and go "It's impossible to get a decent server at this place anymore...they've driven all the good ones away!" She'll go on to tell me she hates me four or fives times throughout the meal and that I've utterly failed her "once again!" She cracks me up, and when I'm really on my A-game, I'll get a few belly laughs out of her too. Though it's taken a long time, I've grown to have a sort of love for Pam. She chooses who she sits with because she sees some waiters as her friends, possibly even her children. When Kim was harassed by a busboy, Pam went straight to the general manager to demand that he fired that busser. When it comes to her kids, she does not joke around. I guess Pam and I are acquaintances at this point in our story, but it is nice to know she sees a potential friend in me. Supposedly she was an extremely successful career woman in a very male dominated business until one day she had a complete psychotic breakdown. She retired more-than-comfortably, but she acquired a number of social anxiety problems as a result of the breakdown. Hence, she comes to Roman's every day, often twice, sometimes three times, sits where she wants and works on crossword puzzles. She never even seems that happy to be there, and maybe that is because being there makes her miss those she grew closest to who have since moved on. Perhaps coming in each day, Pam feels like someone entering a house once shared with a deceased loved one. She knows her kids won't be there, she knows there will be a void, but she can't help but return. Maybe because she feels closer to them even when they aren't there, or maybe because she holds some kind of hope that they might be, and that all this time that's passed never really passed at all.


Some of us, namely Adam, have tried to connect Pam and Tom. He is a bit old for her, but they are both alone and they spend almost equal amounts of time in the restaurant. Why not have a friend to eat with rather than to eat alone? Pam refuses to befriend Tom, and I do not know if anyone has ever said anything to Tom about it. What I wonder, though, is why they both seem so complacent in their loneliness. I think about the possibility of one day being in their shoes and I believe I will do all in my power to seek the presence of others - to seek new friendships after old ones have ceased, after old friends have passed. And maybe I will have my favorite places that I attend more than others, places where I care deeply for certain waiters, barristas, etc. But, I will certainly not eat daily at one restaurant and depend on its waitstaff for company. At the end of the day, a waiter is a waiter, and he or she is there because he or she is going to be tipped. I do not want to have to pay for friendly company when I'm old and alone, or if I'm old and alone.

If only Pam and Tom would venture even five blocks from their building (the same building in which Cafe Roman is situated), who knows the people they might encounter? Is it a quality so many people acquire with age that we give up on others, and recede into our selves, or are Pam and Tom just "those" kind of people? Is my grandmother "that" kind of person? And what if we started a club for lonely people who regularly attend certain restaurants in the city alone, and allowed them to invite the other club members to their favorite restaurant for a group outing? Maybe we could call the group Party of One...