Aloneness and Aging
Sadness fills my heart for all my neighbors who live alone and filled with emptiness with no family contact. They age with chronic health issues and no human touch from those they loved and cared for their whole lives.
Why do adult children stop visiting or calling their grandparents or other family members that supported them until they could no longer? When we age and inflation eats away our money, we become disabled, or have a hard time, our children, nieces, nephews all tend to disappear.
This doesn't happen to every family but it's very common in this 55+ community where I live. Rarely do you ever see family visit or stop by to see someone.
I'm lucky to have the opportunity to see my kids that live here in my city for holidays and birthdays and my long distance kids like to chat with me on messenger. Again today I was witness to what could happen in another eight years.
At 75 those few visits from local kids stop even on holidays and birthdays and family no longer even sends a text or phone call that lives only a mile away. When you are in and out of hospitals, your home is falling apart and someone scammed your bank account leaving you with nothing, you are very much alone.
This type of aloneness is deeper than just feeling lonely. People you loved have died. Even your cat isn't cuddly.
The only way to prevent being pulled from your own home is to ask a neighbor if they will come over during the occupational nurse evaluation because you were the only people left in his life that were kind to him and helped him in times of need.
I felt that really deep today. I told my neighbor he was not alone.
I've stepped up to be more helpful including picking up a few groceries and bringing over home cooked meals as well as stopping by to check the mail for him. I have mowed the grass the past few years and I've always fed his cat on days he was back at the hospital.
Diabetes has damaged his right foot so much that currently there is a stent to help drain excess fluids from his leg in hopes to not have to amputate the foot. His loss of weight is helping with that but so many other things have gone wrong including congestive heart failure.
He is taking 13 different medications daily, some of them twice a day. He's always been a religious man and he's not wanting to die yet but it's God's will. In the meantime he continues in his lonely world. I cannot really help with that.
He is hurt that his niece won't call or other family members. He begs to know why they can't give him 5 minutes? I don't know the answer.
Thank you for reading. This story is about only one neighbor in my mobile home community of 96 homes.
If you have five minutes to spare please give your elders a phone call and if you live not far away, make time to stop by and visit for an hour or two. My heart goes out to all who are aging alone.
