Only the lonely

Pity poor Olive Archer.

She spent the best part of her life caring for her invalid mother, and so passed up the chance of having her own family.

So it’s a tragic irony that when 83-year-old Olive passed away, she did so alone with no family or friends. She spent the last five years of her life in a care home, in which time nobody came to visit her.

Indeed, it was likely that the only people at her funeral would have been the minister and a funeral director, until the Reverend Akasha Lonsdale stepped in. Touched by her story, Lonsdale appealed for any relatives or friends to make themselves known and come along to pay their respects. So far, this call has yielded more than a dozen responses and ensures the pews will be at least partly filled when her funeral takes place on January 14.

But there are a multitude of Olive Archers out there who do not have a Rev Lonsdale to publicise their passing and each week go to their grave without a send-off from anyone.
While Olive’s is the sort of story to send shockwaves through the younger generation – the “I hope I never end up like that” mentality – many do not think about how it is already a grim reality for many older people.

Indeed, Help the Aged reported in October last year that some 300,000 older people go for more than a month without speaking to anyone and more than one million are always or often lonely.

So why does this still happen?

It would be easy now to rant about the death of society and how older people are neglected, but it would not address the issue that many older people are isolated – from society in general and also care services.

More should be done to encourage older people to use communications technology – one of the easiest and increasingly cheap ways to combat loneliness. For example, in the Republic of Ireland, there is a scheme to help older people learn to use mobile telephones, computers and the Internet. There is no reason why that could not be replicated across the Irish Sea.

Also, some of this isolation could be curbed if social services such as day centres were not cut back. Many local councils now focus on people with acute or complex needs, rather than those with lower level requirements, and services such as day centres – vital to those that use them – are starting to vanish, leaving some older people with nowhere to go and few means to keep in touch with friends.