The loneliness of the elderly

Elka Popack, former head of senior programming at JCC, has founded “Smile on Seniors,” an organization that encourages people to visit seniors, if only one hour a week.

Rabbi Dr. Ivan Geller, a gerontologist, delivered an extraordinarily insightful talk on the loneliness of seniors last Shabbos afternoon at EDOS, in conjunction with Popack’s new organization.

Where is loneliness mentioned in the Torah? Geller inquired.

“Loneliness” is not synonymous with solitude or with being alone, Geller stressed. Some of Moses’ most exalted moments were in solitude with G-d, on Mt. Sinai. And being alone is not necessarily being lonely. Many people, including biblical personalities, prefer to be alone at times.

Loneliness, however, is tough to locate in the Torah. It is not named as such. Geller detected the presence of loneliness in the the life of Jacob the Patriarch, after he left Canaan to go down to Egypt. Meeting Pharaoh, Jacob noted that his years were “fewer and poorer” than those of his forbears.

What attacked Jacob’s sense of belonging? What caused his loneliness?

Members of the audience suggested various possibilities: the death of Jacob’s two spouses, the long absence of his son Joseph, whom Jacob thought dead for 22 years, the troubling relationship that Jacob had with his sons Simeon and Levi.

Geller, known for his deep compassion for the elderly, suggested a simpler, immediate cause: the fact that Jacob had moved. He was no longer in Canaan. He was in a foreign country. His surroundings were new, his old and familiar world gone. Jacob was, indeed, lonely.

Though Geller didn’t call it that, he raised the critical issue of generational identity. Example: People my age remember the Six Day War or the Yom Kippur War as formative experiences. People older than I remember WW II or the creation of Israel in the same way. People younger than I remember Watergate, the Reagan years or the Oslo Agreements in this sense. When one talks about these pivotal events with someone who lived through them, there’s an instant connection. Otherwise, these events come up as dry history.

The elderly rarely have that connection because so many of their peers are gone.

That is loneliness.

How can you be lonely? You just talked to your daughter! You just saw your grandkids! How can you be lonely?

Geller: “You can be surrounded by a thousand people and still be lonely.” Surrounded by countless admirers, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik referrred to himself as “the lonely man of faith.”

Geller spoke of the hospice technique of “life review.” What did people live through? Where did they come from? What shaped them? What did they do that was important (even though they are now old and frail and it is hard to imagine that they did something important)?

Well, no one can relive WW II as an old war buddy can, if one did not live through WW II. So how may one alleviate an elderly person’s loneliness? One does not have that instant connection, since one did not live through the formative experience.

“Listening,” said Geller. “Just listening to the elderly. Let them talk. Let them review their own lives or experiences. By listening, one validates the lonely person. Listening is a primary mode of validation.”

And that’s what the elderly lack, and what they seek: validation of their lives.

Geller recalled that when he was a young doctor he used to visit old veterans in hospital “wards.” Many veterans were in a single ward. The camaraderie, the common recollections, were as thick as if smoke filled the wards, Geller said. You could slice it.

“Then came rooms, private rooms, and semi-private rooms, and the wards disappeared. Without them, the loneliness became acute,” said Geller.

One cannot restore an elderly person’s health or friends or relatives, and one cannot share their experiences. But one can volunteer to spend time with them and then — listen.

Validate.

Be there.

Acknowledge.

Sometimes, said Dr. Geller, even one hour of this type of “quality time” with an elderly person can make his or her whole week.

The striking thing about Rabbi Dr. Ivan Geller is how he never tires of his work, never says about a single elderly or lonely person, “if I’ve seen one, I’ve seen ‘em all,” always takes each person as an individual, and is empathetic with that person’s particular loneliness.

Loneliness, he stresses, is not the same as depression or another psychological deficit. Loneliness is an existential category that medicine per se cannot address.

Loneliness requires one human being meeting another.

Listening.

Validating.

Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News