Judith.

I lived in Wollongong, NSW for 7 years and then the Southern Suburbs of Shell Harbour and Dapto for another 5. Wollongong is a coastal city backing onto a high escarpment that is a national park because it is a water catchment for Sydney. One of my favourite places was called Sublime Point, where, from the top of the escarpment, you could view the coastline both north and south for a great distance. We would often take our visitors there. At night the lights would be just as spectacular as the daytime coastline. But therein lies my point. From a distance, it looked stunning, night or day. But because of my work as a Pastor, I knew that down “on the streets and in the homes,” it was not so fine. Crime, domestic violence, poverty, loneliness, death, disease, and suffering are only part of what could be the long list of reality. Sin looks good from a distance. I had the same epiphany from the Heights of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. Beautiful harbor, wonderful view of a sin-sick city.

Not long after one of my visits to Sublime Point, I read the story of Judith Bucknell. A reporter captured a story that left the entire community breathless. Attractive, young, successful, and dead. Judith Bucknell was homicide number one hundred and six that year. She was killed on a steamy summer evening. Age: 38. Weight: 50kgs. Stabbed seven times. Strangled.

She kept a diary. Had she not kept this diary, perhaps the memory of her would have been buried with her body. But the diary exists, a painful epitaph to a lonely life. The correspondent made this comment about her writings: “In her diaries, Judy created a character and a voice. The character is herself, wistful, struggling, weary; the voice is yearning. Judith Bucknell has failed to connect; age 38, many lovers, much love offered, none returned.” Her struggles weren’t unusual. She worried about getting old, getting fat, getting married, getting pregnant, and getting by. She lived in a stylish estate. Judy was the paragon of the confused human being. Half of her life was fantasy; half was a nightmare. Successful as a secretary, but a loser at love. Her diary was replete with entries such as the following: “Where are the men with the flowers and champagne and music? Where are the men who call and ask for a genuine, actual date? Where are the men who would like to share more than my bed, my booze, my food. . . . I would like to have in my life, once before I pass through my life, the kind of sexual relationship which is part of a loving relationship.” She never did.

Judy was not a prostitute. She was not on drugs or on welfare. She never went to jail. She was not a social outcast. She was respectable. She jogged. She hosted parties. She wore designer clothes and had an apartment that overlooked the bay. And she was very lonely. “I see people together, and I’m so jealous I want to throw up. What about me! What about me!” Though surrounded by people, she was on an island. Though she had many acquaintances, she had few friends. Though she had many lovers (fifty-nine in fifty-six months), she had little love. “Who is going to love Judy Bucknell?” the diary continues. “I feel so old. Unloved. Unwanted. Abandoned. Used up. I want to cry and sleep forever.” A clear message came from her aching words. Though her body died on June 9th from the wounds of a knife, her heart had died long before . . . from loneliness. “I’m alone,” she wrote, “and I want to share something with somebody.” Loneliness. It’s a cry. A moan, a wail. It’s a gasp whose origin is the recesses of our souls.

Can you hear it? The abandoned child. The divorcée. The quiet home. The empty email folder or mailbox. The long days. The longer nights. A one-night stand. A forgotten birthday. A silent mobile phone. Cries of loneliness. Listen again. Tune out the traffic and turn down the TV. The cry is there. Our cities are full of Judy Bucknell’s. You can hear their cries. You can hear them in the retirement homes among the sighs and the shuffling feet and the blank stares of those sitting around waiting to die. You can hear them in the prisons among the moans of shame and the calls for mercy. You can hear them if you walk the manicured streets of suburban suburbs, among the aborted ambitions and aging honour graduates. Listen for it in the halls of our high schools where peer pressure weeds out the “have-nots” from the “haves.” This moan in a minor key knows all spectrums of society. From the top to the bottom. From the failures to the famous. From the poor to the rich. From the married to the single. Judy Bucknell is not alone. TBC