Reassurance

While experiencing the rather desperate uncertainty that comes with focusing my attention upon the life-struggle at the end of life, I heard something from another that warmed my heart and made me think. These are some of my thoughts.

I live alone. My daughter (27) lives back east in Philadelphia. I am the oldest in a large family (8 siblings), but none of them really knows me, and is so busy with their own lives they don’t even know what I’m up to, or what matters to me. I have friends, and a well-cultivated sense of community. I am Lucky, I also have an important relationship with Xan. Still, in living alone, I feel lonely and vulnerable. I live with some level of dread, that something might happen to me, and that days may pass before anyone knows.

I don’t think I, and my feelings of dread, are that unusual. It seems that this might be an old person’s kind of dread. Why not? Isolation seems to breed this particular anxiety. Most the time, I don’t even notice I’m feeling anything like it. I’ve grown so used to this feeling, of isolation, that I hardly notice it. I live alone. I am good at it. I’ve learned how to turn loneliness into solitude. I may have gained a self of my own, but I’m still isolated. Life in this culture means that I live alone most of the time.

As I said, I’ve grown so used to it. Most of the time, isolation is just like the air I breathe, there, unnoticed, and determinative of the quality of my life. I take it for granted. But, recently while sitting in a group dedicated to looking a little harder at the end of our lives, I felt again the price I pay for living in this modern way. I live alone. I am touched occasionally, by loving others, but I experience long periods of time when I am on my own. Now, maybe this matters more to me because I’ve known the vulnerability of having everything change instantaneously, or the experience of being in the emergency room alone, or waiting on a gurney for emergency surgery without anyone to talk to. I am a disabled old person now.  Thus, being alone carries a poignant weight for me.

Whatever the case might be, I am aware that my chances of having the life, or death, I want, are all dependent upon having someone on hand who is interested in helping me toward that desire. That makes me very dependent upon the person, or persons, who are currently not there. Rilke said, “I live too alone in this world,” and so do I. Aloneness may be an existential fact of life, but the kind of social aloneness that is haunting me, is an artifact of the way we organize ourselves. The kind of loneliness that assails me, and causes me so much dread, is social aloneness. I live alone, in a world occupied by other lonely people.

So, I was feeling this pretty intensely, while facing the fact that I have little influence upon how this life might end. I heard someone in the group describing an idea meant to address some of the aloneness I felt. This is why I wanted to attend this group, I was hoping I might hear fresh ideas of ways to move toward the qualities I wanted in my remaining days. She talks about “reassurance calls.” It seems her elderly mother had once lived in a senior community, where volunteers called each, and every old person, to check in on them, and let them know they were being thought of.

The thought of receiving such a call, brought ambivalence to my mind, I’m not sure I want to be so evidently in need of attention, but what also came was a feeling of assurance, I am somebody enough to be cared about. I also felt what it would be like to make such a call. I liked the feeling of caring about the community I am part of. It was reassuring to me, feeling so thoroughly connected.

I really am touched by this idea. I feel so strongly the goodness, the rightness of this practice that I want to do it. I will proceed unilaterally if I have to. And, I don’t have to wait for anyone’s approval. I can start as soon as I want to. I’m sure I’ll recommend it to others, but you know, I’ve been looking for ways I can undermine the cultural edifice I feel stamped by, and this seems like a really good, humanly satisfying, way.

I think I am going to create a list of those people I know, whom I think might benefit from such a call, and start calling them. I urge you to consider doing the same. Call me sometime too. If you want me to call you, let me know. I can’t imagine living without this sense of connection. I’ll let you know if it affects my loneliness. I expect it will. I hope you might benefit to.