Visiting and Loneliness

Elderly and loneliness. Photo: canva.com

Over the past years in Aotearoa, I have spent much time visiting refugees from Colombia and migrants from several other countries. While several families from Myanmar, India, and Zimbabwe still have young families, I have noticed a change in the people I am visiting lately. A number of those whom I visit are now in hospitals as a result of strokes or in rest homes because of their age. Since many of them are my peers, they could be saying more about me than society in general. However, there is no doubt that people are living to a greater age. The increasing number of rest homes is a witness to that. A colleague told me recently that a parish in Auckland has 40 rest homes in it, thus opening up a new ministry for dedicated lay people.

The situation of older people who still live in their own homes or in rest homes is similar. The biggest factor is loneliness. People living alone in their own homes can easily pass a whole day without speaking to anyone, especially if they are not mobile or unable to drive. Loneliness can also occur in rest homes where other people there often lack the ability to communicate.

In such situations, a visitor does not need to say much. Lonely people want to talk rather than be talked to. I remember when Columban Frank Carey, now deceased, was appointed to be a hospital chaplain in Melbourne. As he headed off on the first day, he told me that he was quite nervous. ''What am I going to say to them?'' he asked. When I saw him months later, I asked him how he was managing. ''It's easy,'' he said, '' I have been there 4 months now and I haven't got off the first floor. The patients never stop talking!''

So as the pattern of a lot of the people I visit is changing so must I learn to be an attentive listener and not talk so much. One of my colleagues in the hospital wing of a rest home said to me, ''Shut up, I haven't finished talking yet.''  A good lesson I thought for the rest of my life also.

Columban Fr Don Hornsey lives and works in New Zealand.