Loneliness, Part 2: ‘Filled with a sense of irreplaceable loss’

A member of my online support group wanted to talk about loneliness after reading my blog post on the subject last week. I reviewed what I had written for those who hadn’t read it: Loneliness and being alone aren’t the same thing, at least not for me, because I sometimes feel most alone when I am with my wife.

“Yeah!” my friend replied. “I sat on the couch Saturday afternoon watching a basketball game. My husband was there beside me. But we didn’t talk about what was on the TV. He couldn’t follow along.”

Another group member summarized the problem well: “It’s a loss of companionship,” she said, reflecting on her experience with her husband whose care finally required her to admit him to a nursing home.

Lonely, but not alone

A longtime, long-distance friend Becky Ahlberg, a widow of almost three years, read last week’s post and wrote me to tell how she identified with it. She has plenty of people in her life, she said, but she still feels lonely. I asked for permission to quote from her email.

“The loneliness factor described in your column is not my problem,” she wrote. “I’m around people all the time who love me deeply and care for me kindly. And I’m plenty busy.

“But I think I’ve finally found the word, the condition, that gnaws at me—and maybe at you. I am bereft (‘deprived of somebody or something loved or valued and filled with a sense of irreplaceable loss’).

“What I miss so much is the stimulating conversations, the iron-sharpens-iron experiences, the collegial prodding, the speaking-the-truth-in-love epiphanies, the ‘growing up’ together.”

Becky found this not only in her husband, who was first her colleague and later her “best friend,” but also in lifelong relationships with a few others who have moved to new parts of the country and out of her life.

Her husband’s illness was physical, not at all cognitive. “Though I spent almost a year as a caregiver as he was facing some daunting physical challenges, I never lost him,” she wrote.

I replied, “I think I understand, because in many ways I have lost her.”

Pictures of the void

Some examples:

• My wife is reading aloud from a Coldwater Creek catalog—including product descriptions, colors, prices, and sometimes even item numbers—while I’m trying to work at my computer in the next room. Later she interrupts to show me an item she’d like, and we agree to order it. But I never follow through, and she never reminds me she wanted it.

• We sit at a restaurant enjoying the food, which is a good thing, because the meal in front of us is all I can find to talk about with her.

• She reads the caption on our cartoon-a-day calendar and walks out of the kitchen giggling at it, but I’m not at all sure she understands why it’s funny.

• We watch a TV show, one of a dwindling number of programs she’ll sit through, but this evening she doesn’t sit through this one, either. She’s up and down off the couch, back and forth to the bathroom, up and down the stairs leading from our basement family room to somewhere upstairs.

She goes up and doesn’t come back. I wait 10 minutes and go to find her stretched out on the couch in the living room.

“Do you want to come finish the show?” I ask, and she eagerly says, “Yes.” But her agitation won’t end, and finally I give up and join her upstairs, the program not finished.

• Another evening she stays put downstairs with me to watch a Hallmark Mystery and Movie she chose. But soon she finds a stack of old greeting cards on the table beside her and begins reading them aloud while the movie prattles on in front of us.

Finally, I ask her, “Do you want to watch this show?” “Oh, yes,” she answers, “I’m watching it,” and returns to reading her cards. I look for something interesting on my laptop to occupy me amid the unignorable nattering.

Trying to fill the void

When Evelyn and I are driving to church or some appointment, I play music to fill the silence. Once in a while she’ll sing along; that’s a good day. Sometimes she reads me street signs and headlines from the billboards we’re passing; I try to form cogent responses.

Sometimes she’s quiet, and I turn on NPR to fill the void, but she doesn’t comment on what we’re hearing.

Sometimes at suppertime she tells me what I’ve fixed is good—if I ask her. Sometimes she reacts with overblown emotion to a tragedy reported on the evening news we’re watching. Sometimes she scurries to clear the table, maybe before I’ve had a chance to get seconds. But other times she retreats to the couch, leaving me in the kitchen with the TV and the dirty dishes.

These are the moments when, even though I am not alone—maybe especially because I am not alone—I feel a loneliness that’s difficult to describe. Thank you, Becky, for giving me a word for it. Bereft.

The good . . . and the loss

To be sure, we have pleasant moments. And I’m learning to fill my life with nurturing relationships away from home. Like Becky, we have many people who love us, and I stay quite busy. I thank God daily for his goodness to us.

But as I write these words in the morning, my wife is asleep in our bed in the next room, where she’ll likely stay till I wake her no later than 11:00. I’ll get her pills, pour her something to drink, encourage her to take all her medicine, and chatter at her about the day, with little response in return. I’ll smile at her, and maybe sit and eat a little something with her.

Throughout the day I’ll work at engaging her with something to read or music we’ll enjoy or a household task we can do together. Maybe we’ll take a walk. But in a quiet moment alone, I’ll likely feel tears welling up, unbidden, each one an expression of what I know I’m experiencing: “Something loved or valued” is largely gone. And I’m struck again with the overwhelming reality of an “irreplaceable loss.”

Photos by Giancarlo Corti on Unsplash and QunicaStudio and grynold at iStock