I said to the caller, whose call came at near midnight, ‘Sorry, you’ve got the wrong number,’ and was about to put the phone down, when he said, with pleading in his voice, ‘Please, please!’ I said, ‘What can I do for you?’ and immediately there came a torrent of words, as if to unload everything into my ears before I changed my mind. From the voice and accent, I could tell it was an elderly Indian man, from the fractured English, probably one with little education.

But in the frenzied outpouring in the hardly comprehensible English—I gathered his wife had died some years ago, and he had a son whom he had educated at great expense but who never visited once during the month he was in hospital for a heart operation for some blocked arteries– one statement stood out in the perfect clarity of grammar and emotion: ‘I am so lonely!’

I think I would have felt great guilt if (as I had been tempted to do during the hour or so of his agitated sharing) I had said a brusque, ‘Excuse me,’ and ended the call. Later thinking about the incident in which one person just had to call another- anybody at all—to relieve a heart burdened by more than just blocked arteries, I could not help reflecting on this thing called loneliness that is said to be what ultimately most people die from!

Actually I find it hard to believe that people can be lonely at all, when there are just so many things to do, so many things to be interested in if only one takes the trouble to look around. But that’s exactly the trouble with people like myself (and a whole lot of my friends enjoying a retirement that they say keeps them busier than when they were working). Enjoying good health, spirits, financial independence and good family relationships, we can have little idea about the experiences of those on the other side.

‘I am so lonely!’ said the Indian man who wouldn’t let me put down the phone. ‘She was so lonely, so I visited her about once a week, just to chat and gossip,’ said an elderly distant relative whom I happened to meet in a supermarket. She was talking about a friend who, like her, lived alone, and had passed away a short while before. ‘I felt sorry for the poor old lady who would sit by herself for hours in the darkness,’ she said and then went on to confess her own need, ‘I don’t really have anything to buy today, but I like to come out and just watch people, maybe even talk to them. Then the day doesn’t seem too long.’

‘People who need people are the luckiest people in the world,’ sang Barbra Streisand. I’m not sure I agree; indeed, I’m tempted to attach that horribly negating prefix to the word, and say they’re the unluckiest people in the world, since, having to depend on another’s company for solace, they are no longer in control of their lives.

So often, loneliness is tinged with self-pity. I’m tempted to tell everyone, of whatever age, who says he or she is lonely: Hey, get up, get out, look around. Even better, think back on those experiences in the past that had made you happy precisely because you depended on yourself and no other– surely it is in your power to re-create some of them? Best of all, you’ll find, once you have reclaimed your habit of self-reliance, that you are your own best company, instead of being your own worst enemy!

I’m thinking in particular of an acquaintance, a well-to-do widow with three sons who were doing very well in their respective professions. She lived with her youngest, still unmarried son. On St Valentine’s Day, when he was preparing to go out for a dinner date with a girlfriend, she turned to look at him with such a woebegone look on her face, that he decided to cancel his date and keep her company that evening. Sometimes, loneliness is a form of emotional blackmail.

But then her case was unusual. I’m thinking again of that elderly Indian man lying on a hospital bed, recovering from a heart operation, still waiting for a visit from his son.

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...