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I have a 78 year old neighbor, widower, who sits in her house alone most the time, waiting to die. I check on her. We share food. We talk. I listen to the stories she has told perhaps a hundred times as if I have heard them for the first time. She has family. We all do. They’re distant, they’re busy, or, as in the case with mine- they’re too bat-shit crazy to spend time with. My neighbor doesn’t want a roommate. She doesn’t want a new ‘fella.’ She doesn’t want a pet. The few friends she has have suggested these things, some even telling her to get over ‘death,’ move on, and nothing makes her madder than hearing that. Hell, it would make me mad to hear that. Her deceased husband was her high school sweet heart and they were together 62 years. “You don’t just get over that.” I don’t spend our time trying to persuade her. She is not suicidal. She simply exists, remembering her life with a man that is now gone.
What would you do? More often than not, you will hear a lament from family and friends, relationships aren’t what they used to be. That feels true to me. I think there are pros and cons to that truth, if it’s a truth. I can make arguments for it being true.
Many of my own family have lived equally isolated lives. The statistics are quite clear, more and more people live alone, especially the elderly. We are isolated. We are experiencing epic rates of depression and anxiety. Suicide rates go up during holiday seasons. We’re more connected today than in any time in the history of people, thanks to media and cellphones, and yet, more lonely…
