LONELYNESS

My friend is a retired nurse who graciously and generously still volunteers her time and talents at a nursing home. She spent her whole life carrying for people and teaching others how too, and I think she doesn’t know how to quit and that is good. But the reason I’m writing about this is, we talked a while back and she said the one thing that seems to standout in nursing homes is the loneliness of the people. My Father –in –law lived in a home for many years and each time my family would go to visit grandpa we too would see the vacant looks on the faces of people who never saw anyone but the staff. Christmas, Easter, and holidays were always the hardest and although you wanted to bring them all home to dinner you knew you couldn’t.

Each and every day the medical people in this country tell us how to take care of our selves in one way or another. “Eat this and you’ll feel better. Don’t smoke and get out and walk or exercise,” they tell us. “If you don’t use that body you will lose it. Your body doesn’t necessarily wear out but like an old car it slows down and unless you keep it up it will rust away.” They talk about your mind too and how you need to challenge it with conversations, reading and crossword puzzles. It, like your body and that old car, can deteriorate with of lack of use and your mind is a terrible thing to waste.

But back to the nursing home. For so many of these people the world has ceased to exist beyond the confines of the front doors. The staffs work hard to keep them busy and occupied but there are only so many things you can do with so few people. What the people really need is someone from the outside to talk with. Someone to take them shopping or to the Dairy Queen. Someone to take them to the cemetery on Memorial Day to say hi to the one they spent the better part of their lives with. Someone who will tell them they are still needed and loved. Many of them do have some family that visits and cares and that is good but those who don’t, feel the loneliness twice as bad when they’re left behind alone.

Our bodies cannot survive without food, water and medicine. Our minds cannot survive without love and interaction from people who care. We remember when we were kids and we used to whine to mom, “I have nothing to do. I’m bored.” Yes even then we needed to be occupied. Think how it must be now at the other end of your life. As kids we never thought about death and dying but for the old and shut-in’s you couldn’t help but dwell on it because there is little left to think about when you are all alone like that.

Maybe I should take this a step farther because there are shut-in’s and lonely people in their own homes who suffer too.  On July 4^th 1939, Lou Gehrig, sick with A.L.S. said in his farewell speech. “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” He wasn’t talking about money or fame. He surely wasn’t talking about the disease that would go on to bear his name. He was talking about his fans and friends. For a lot of people in the twilight of their lives that’s all they have left, family and friends. If your one of them, try hard to be there for them.