It is a hut. A small one. Probably less than forty square meters, which is the entire room that serves as bedroom, dining, kitchen all in one. The bathroom is the size not much larger than the old fashion telephone booth, for those who remember or know what they are. The only luxury is running water. One faucet in the kitchen, one in the bathroom. Electricity, unpaid for months, had been cut off. The room is also the receiving area and family room. Neither feature means anything anymore to the eighty nine year old lady sitting on a rickety rocking chair by one of only two windows. She does not have a family to speak of nor is there anyone to visit her except for a middle age postal worker who comes once every two weeks who brings from time to time whatever food, mostly canned goods and week-old bread she can carry in her mail bag, mostly from the local charity chapter of a non-profit organization. The unpaid "social worker" does it out of her own time and on her dime. She had seen enough of these elderly people - alone and often unseen - during the last twenty three years while working for the local post office. A young family man who lives half a kilometer down the road heard the story from the postal lady so he comes at regular intervals to cut firewood for the old lady. He also brings kerosene for the one portable lamp. Both good Samaritans wonder how often the old lady gets to eat a warm meal, lately. The wood-fired stove does not look like it has been used much, recently.
It is not an imagined scene nor is it an isolated case. The elderly living alone is a growing phenomenon. The saddest part is that single-person homes were just 10 per cent of total households for most of the 19th century around the world but now, the so-called modern era, it had almost exponentially rose to an alarming rate. In 2012, in Stockholm, Sweden, the number of household consisting of a single person was 60%, almost half of them occupied by old folks.
Would it have been different for that eighty nine year old lady if the little hut were a mansion? Her life would be a little easier and comfortable, yes; but her loneliness would not be any less. The mental anguish no less severe, the emotional need no less wanting.
You don't have to understand the entire chart below but be aware that each single dot represents the percentage of single households relative to all households.
I say, the biggest fear among the elderly is not about dying but living. Alone.
Is it a third world only phenomenon? One might ask. Far from it, actually. Third world population has a lower single household by far compared to first world countries and most ironically, wealthy nations have more of it.
Direct quote from World Data: "In the US, the share of adults who live alone nearly doubled over the last 50 years. This is not only happening in the US: single-person households have become increasingly common in many countries across the world, from Angola to Japan".
The biggest distress among the elderly from living alone is when no one comes to visit. The longing for company, even at the briefest amount of time, is on top of their greatest of needs. More than food itself, if we can believe that.
Below is one alarming statistics. Among those below 35 years old, suicide is the No. 2 cause of death. It is fourth in the 35-54 age group. By age 65 and over it is no longer in the top 10.
What does the data tell us? By age 65 and over the will to live and to go on living is well established in that age group. Those who had gotten past that age had gone through the entire natural cycle of life, having survived their youth, midlife, stayed relatively healthy for the most part to have made it through, so far, and now mostly retired. Even if not too financially wealthy, we cannot and should not ignore that they have the wealth of information and experience. Yet, by their age, they are ignored.
The age group 25-35 registered the highest incidence of suicide. Suicide, as explained by those in the mental health care, is not about killing oneself. It is about killing the pain that brings someone the heavy emotional load no longer bearable.
The elderly had survived all of the travails life had thrown at them. They made it thus far. They coped, they prevailed.
The antidote to dying young is to grow old.
There is only one ticket on the train of life doled out to each of us. It is sad that some of the youth would give it up on their own and decide to cut the trip short. The elderly are those who early on and much later in life decided to make full use of their ticket, not relinquishing their right to reach the utmost of what physically they can muster to reach their final destination.
This musing will not be of much value if it does not lead to the conversation about what we of a certain age - we know who we are - can do to make the train ride at the later segment of our journey a little more comfortable, less alone, or simply feeling less alone, or find joy even during moments of being alone. More importantly, what is it we can do for those among us already burdened by the heavy load of loneliness.
There are a lot of "worthy causes" in the world that come barging into our mailboxes, or brought to us on television, full of visual images and melancholic background music, each in need of our support. Do you recall any TV ad of one non-profit, solely for the elderly, not predicated on the extent of how much their retirement money can afford? How much do talk shows discuss the plight of the elderly? The elderly, the unseen, the ignored. We can do more, give more to support their plight. That is where charity money we can spare should go. But what of us and what can we do for ourselves? The lady postal worker and middle age man in the first paragraph had done more per capita than what charity work can accomplish.
You are reading this because you live in the modern era that less than a century ago was only the figment of a science fiction writer's most outlandish imagination. We cook without fire in minutes, we reached out and can be reached from halfway around the world at the click of a mouse. And since when did a mouse adorn our desks.
Via Skype and Zoom, to name just two, we have access to family members and friends willing to share the same electronic conduit to carry audio and video images in real time from anywhere to anywhere. Add to that emails via the internet and we have what little consolation modern society has to offer. Even when physical hobbies are now beyond us we still have that one last thing where everything actually begins, where our entire being had all started. That soft tissue not much heavier than three and a half pounds located between our ears is our last refuge. It is our fortress of solitude when solitude is forced upon us. But that is getting ahead of ourselves.
Nursing homes are places full of people but where one may feel alone.
It was the late Robin Williams who said,
“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone”.
-- Robin Williams
The elderly may be ignored but they do not have to ignore what the modern world has to offer. Ride shares like Uber and Lyft are a Godsend to the old and single who no longer want to drive. Grocery stores now offer free delivery and free curb side service, and more and more restaurants will now deliver, gourmet food or none-to-fancy. I do not want to over assume here but I am hopeful that soon much of the world will have realized to focus services to those unfortunate to be living alone. Governments must respond because the elderly is not only already a voting force and growing but the latest survey shows that they, on average, have more financial wherewithal than Gen X's and Z's and Y's or whatever alphabetical distinctions young people go by these days.
There is much hope for single home dwellers. More and more of those living alone are coping much better than their counterparts in nursing homes. Tragically, many nursing home residents fared worst during the Covid 19 pandemic. Isolation served the elderly living alone the most protection, extreme social distancing aside.
What follows here is all analogy, a metaphor perhaps.
A TV Western series, "Have Gun Will Travel", that ran from 1957 to 1963, was initially a radio serial turned TV series that starred Richard Boone as Paladin, the perfect gentleman gunslinger who helped the wronged and the bullied who sought his help and "he was able to circumvent obstacles and achieve victory where it was seemingly beyond the reach of a mere mortal".
I said enough about the show. The reader may want to read up on it some more and that is where the reader, I surmise, must begin his or her quest, to embark on a journey, "Have Mind Will Travel".
This much we know. The brain makes new connections every chance it gets, or rather, every opportunity if it is stimulated enough for its neurons and synapses to remain actively "fired up".
Direct quotes:
"The dogma for the longest time was that adult brains couldn't generate any new brain cells. You just use what you were born with, says, "Dr. Amar Sahay, a neuroscientist with Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. "But the reality is that everyone has the capacity to develop new cells that can help enhance cognitive functions."
"Everyone" in that quote includes everyone - the elderly included. But there is a catch, apparently. There are no free lunches.
Just watching TV and just reading passively are not the ticket. What is it then? We ask. What if we are past the active physical hobbies, even wheelchair bound or just home bound, to take the extreme?
The mind. Use it or lose it. Not only that it is easy to use, it is the one that can pry open windows to the world from where we sit, our viewing and search options unlimited. But there's a catch. Use it actively, not passively, we're told, because it has capacity more powerful than the most massive hard drive in any computer. That is why for the brain to be only 2-3 per cent of our body weight, it demands access to 25 % of the entire energy we consume and subsequently utilize.
For this to work, we are told to keep our brain curious and stimulated as a child would. We're supposed to get our minds set to curiosity, whatever personally you want to engage in. In today's day and age, would you like to wonder what it is like to be on the Trans-Siberia railroad, wander through the seaside of Nice, in France, what does the atom really look like, how does the loom work, how does Google work, what number is represented by 1 googol, how do bees and ants communicate, etc. Just throwing everything out there and all of these are literarily out there - the www.dot world and on YouTube and TED Talk only mouse clicks away. The brain wants new stuff so don't get in the habit of sticking to the routine but to what is new to it, we are admonished.
Hand-eye coordination is something we learned hard to do early on in our infancy. But did you know that was the age brain stimulation was its most active, ever?. Do handwriting again, if you are not already painting stuff, needle work, crochet or the crossword, etc. Even keystrokes as you compose whatever it is you want to write about are beneficial, and, surprisingly, more so to those who can't do touch-typing. Calligraphy is the ultimate hand eye activity where writing is concerned.
There is much to cover. But what are you waiting for? Write today's diary, write to somebody, get your mind on an adventure to someplace you haven't been to before, from your chair, wheeled or not, the kitchen table, because even to the immobile, electrons will still move at the speed of light to get you to places you have not been to or things you know little about but dying to know what or how. "Dying to know" is the magnitude of intensity your brain wants. So, do it.
Always remember though, there is more to the insatiable mind. It is the process of keeping our mind constantly fed and excited, so we must use it or lose it.
There's more. Its hard drive has more capacity than The Library of Congress. Like the library we can share some of its contents and in return we must allow it to receive even more from others. Then it will not be alone.
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