Loneliness and the Elderly

I often visit the Connecticut Senior Information website, which acts as a hub of important web-based information for seniors here in the Nutmeg State, and recently I ran across this thoughtful musing on loneliness and the elderly: Download Loneliness.doc.  Unfortunately, there is no author provided.

This writing seems to assume a middle-aged audience and asks the reader to project forward to the future when the young kids you raised have struck out on their own to raise their own families, you are no longer working and you have reached a point where visits from friends are few and far-between because they can't get out easily or they have departed the earth altogether.  The result: a deep sense of isolation and loneliness.

I appreciated the insight this writing provides since my wife and I are deep in the throes of raising three energetic young boys with their soccer games, cub scouts, educational issues and trying to keep the household at least somewhat in order.  Oh yes, there's running the law practice as well!  This leaves precious little time for visiting my parents, despite the fact that they are less than an hour away.  Just making a phone call is a bit of a task since the 2 year-old and 5-year old apparently have a policy of climbing all over me and demanding a dozen different things whenever they see me reach for the phone.

So I think there's a lot of truth to this writing and it provides an insightful perspective on how a sense of loneliness can gradually creep up on members of our elderly population.  So if you have seniors in the family I ask that you take five minutes out of your hectic day to give this a quick read.

Comments

[Jerrold Bartholomew]

Your comments are well-taken, Mr. Keenan. I am fortunate to be with my wife's family this weekend, but it is an exception. Meanwhile, my own parents are several states away and they have not seen my youngest son walk. It is worth reflecting on time, distance, and family and making the effort to contact the elderly as much as possible. I am working on adding web-conferencing as a way to keep in touch with my clients, but perhaps I should be getting my parents set up too! Thanks for the food for thought.

Jerry Bartholomew