Mental Health
Balancing Loneliness and Life
A Personal Look at Aging and Connection
There’s a balancing act we’re not talking about when you get old. It’s a liminal space, where we’re caught between the last of our health and the quiet horror of hospice.
It’s too easy to get stuck there. But there’s probably a way out. I’d like to share an experience.
Of all the patients I’ve worked with in my days as a health care worker, one man remains stuck in my memory.
He wanted to die.
To look at him, you’d never know why. He was in great physical shape. At 94, he still walked 2 miles every day to get the morning paper. He ate well, slept well and regaled the other retirees in the waiting room with outrageous stories. Their raucous laughter always made me smile.
I remember the many times I left my dispensing table to go outside and hear him tell his stories. After 94 years, he had so many of them.
And to look at his prescriptions, I was stymied. He didn’t have any of the chronic aliments we all accumulate as we age. Nothing for high blood pressure. Nothing for diabetes. Nothing for glaucoma. All he took were vitamins and minor things like ibuprofen and pain gels.