Loneliness is the ultimate form of poverty, and the poorest are the elderly. A study in 2012 found that nearly 3 million older people face loneliness every day and it can have devastating effects on their overall health and happiness.
Every other week, I deliver meals to a group of seniors and one of the men on my route always breaks my heart. His name is Georgie and he's one of the loneliest people I know. The loneliness is crushing and brings more pain than arthritis, a broken hip and stiff joints combined.
Georgie almost always waits for me at his front door. Because of my schedule, I can't be there at the exact time each week so this means he waits by the door, sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for half an hour. I know this because it can take him up to ten minutes to get from one room to the next so there's no way he gets up when he hears my car. The idea of him waiting by the door for me is heartbreaking.
He doesn't need the food. His refrigerator is stacked with unopened, shrink-wrapped meals. Georgie doesn't wait by the door for his meals. He doesn't wait by the door to let me in either as we've long-since established a routine that I am to come in without knocking and place his food on his kitchen counter.
No, Georgie waits by the door for me. He waits for my smile and my "how are you feeling today?" He waits because he has days and days of conversations pent up inside him. He crams all of this into one conversation so it's not unlike him to tell me where the neighbors went and how he couldn't play cards this week at the club house because his body is too riddled with pain. He explains that this all started when he fell into the basement when he was two years old. The house was under construction and he opened the door to the basement and stepped in except there were no steps and he fell into the darkness and landed on the cement below, butt first. He crushed his spine and old age has made his every move nearly unbearable. He reminisces about his time in the air force and his time as a salesman in Pennsylvania, where he sold heavy equipment and traveled across the state meeting interesting people and doing fun things. Lately and sometimes, with tears in his eyes, he remembers how he lost his wife when she was only 33 years old. He misses her daily and often thinks of what could have been, if that accident hadn't happened.
"It's been a long time since then," he says, his chin quivering as he looks into the distance.
Georgie has been scaring me lately because he seems to have given up. Every time I see him, another layer of life is stripped from his skin. The brightness of his eyes is dimming. He moves just a little slower. He tells me how painful it all is; his knees, his back, his neuropathy...but mostly, the being alone.
This week he told me all about how many houses are open in his adult community. "That woman died in her shower. Her kids found her. How awful is that? The man across the street had to go to the nursing home before he died but he's gone too. At least there was someone there at the end. I've already talked to my kids about when that time comes."
My heart let out a groan when he said this. My mind flashed back to having to make all those decisions for my own parents...the business of dying is so natural yet it feels so wrong. The day she died, my mom said she was afraid to die alone. And then she died alone. It's haunted me for five years.
I think people might know when they're time has come. Or maybe, they just decide to give up; that the pain is too much, the loneliness too much to bear. I'm so worried about Georgie. I'm terrified to roll up into his driveway one day and he won't be there. I so love our time together. I love bringing my kids there and letting him show them his model airplanes and his proudly displayed cross stitch art. I love to hear him tell me about his neighbors and his life, all the things that make him smile and all the things that make him utter, "if only I'd..."
I'm so privileged to be there for all of it. Every time I see him, it's bittersweet. I'm happy to be there but I also know that it's another day closer to the end. I've known Georgie for four years now. He's a highlight on my delivery route, in fact, I always leave him to the end so I can spend extra time hanging out with him. I will be crushed when that day comes. I will be inconsolable. But I will also be lucky to have known him.
For now, I'll keep showing up, a so many of us young people should. We should show up despite the hectic schedules, despite not having much in common, despite the fact that they've told us the story ten thousand times before. We should show up because our energy gives them energy, our life brings them life. We should do it because when we do, we are changing the world, we are fighting poverty in one of it's most painful forms. We should show up because we do unto others...and we hope that someday, someone will do unto us.
"Being unwanted, unloved and uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is the much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. - Mother Teresa
For more by Alicia, please visit her blog at America's Next Top Mommy
