I took a loneliness test yesterday and passed with flying colors. The funny thing was I didn’t know I was lonely until I finished the test. The last question was something like “How often do you feel sorry for yourself?” Once I had added up all the feeling sorry for myself times I could remember, I really did feel sorry for myself but I still couldn’t translate that into feeling seriously lonely. And that includes having my darling daughter and her two cats sharing my space. We pretty much keep our lives separate.
The surgeon general and the miscellaneous other folks we pay to tell us how we are have declared loneliness and isolation the latest epidemic with nearly half of us in this country afflicted. It apparently contributes to poor health, shortens our lives, makes us sad and more likely to get dementia.
I have my moments and keeping friends and an active community when you are 87 is a challenge; between covid and the other ailments the elderly seem to attract. I have lost a number of companions in recent years and there have been lonely moments, but I am surprised to realize I don’t think I am seriously lonely. I think maybe my expectations of community had a different grounding.
I grew up in the Bronx in the 1940’s on a long street of five story apartments. My building had a circular courtyard with three lobbies, the street level lined with small stores and a wide sidewalk. Most afternoons the women in the building would bring down folding chairs and form a group near the front entrance. Some would have baby carriages, others waiting for their kids to come home from school. Children would check in, go “upstairs” to change to play clothes and come back for whatever the game of the month was: roller skating, or board games under the watchful eyes of the grownups.
On particularly hot days, this whole scene would move “around the corner” where there was shade and windowless brick walls for different varieties of play: kickball, jonny on a pony, double dutch. Mostly the kids ignored the women and vice versa unless discipline was needed. Rainy days would see a lot of impromptu visiting between apartments and kids playing what we could in the wide hallways.
Things changed during and after the war. Women went to work and didn’t have time for hanging out. Teenagers appeared, seemingly for the first time. The exodus to the wide open spaces of the suburbs and to divergent silicon valleys grew steadily and the apartment culture deteriorated. Stores were covered with iron gratings and there were fewer small ones. Telephones replaced face to face conversation. Cars proliferated and the TV substituted for neighbors dropping by. And we are living much longer than the 65 that was assumed a permanent retirement age.
Are we destined to become increasingly lonely as these changes escalate? The gurus suggest ways to improve community and I am sure the baby boomers will make Star Treks Holodecks a reality. Zoom etc. got us through the pandemic and continues to be popular. There are any number of group development efforts and something called reminiscence therapy uses virtual reality to help seniors look back on their lives despite memory loss. A cure for dementia would be a big upheaval. I am skilled at wasting time. I facilitate groups, write epics like this, read Regency romances and hope that losing a word now and then doesn’t predict something worse. One day at a time.
I really liked this one!
You’re amazing!