I am sit­ting at a tab­le ac­ross from my friend, lis­te­ning to him tell of his life and his lo­ne­li­ness in old age. His wife died a few ye­ars ago af­ter more than for­ty ye­ars of mar­ri­a­ge. He is still grie­ving, and lo­ne­li­ness brings te­ars in­to his ey­es.

My friend’s home is on a be­au­ti­ful spot by a lar­ge lake. There are no neigh­bors in the win­ter, so no­bo­dy will drop in for a chat. Old age has brought bo­di­ly pains which make it dif­fi­cult for him to le­a­ve home. To get to ser­vi­ces he would need to drive ten ki­lo­me­ters, and it is not ea­sy for him to get out in his car eit­her. He does not mind li­ving by him­self, but it is hard to be al­wa­ys alo­ne.

The win­ter seems long, but the sum­mer brings pe­op­le to the ne­ar­by cot­ta­ges. Sum­mer vi­si­tors so­me­ti­mes pop over to see my friend. These vi­sits are like bright sun­ra­ys in his grey eve­ry­day life. He re­mi­nis­ces about these vi­sits for a long time af­ter­wards. It is ea­sy to un­ders­tand their va­lue when I see his ey­es light up and hear him re­turn over and over again to these pre­ci­ous mo­ments.

When I sit there and lis­ten, I feel I am le­ar­ning so­met­hing im­por­tant. I know there are many old pe­op­le around us who find it dif­fi­cult to get to ser­vi­ces and ot­her events in the way they used to. How many of them live alo­ne, iso­la­ted by their il­l­nes­ses and pains, unab­le to take dai­ly com­pa­ny for gran­ted?

Would it be pos­sib­le at each rau­ha­nyh­dis­tys to lo­ca­te the se­ni­ors no lon­ger ab­le to move around in­de­pen­dent­ly and to ar­ran­ge ri­des to ser­vi­ces for them? Could cong­re­ga­ti­ons make their se­ni­or friends­hip ser­vi­ce avai­lab­le even more wi­de­ly. And most im­por­tant­ly, could each of us lift our gaze from our dai­ly rou­ti­nes and think about the el­ders who live close to us. What could you and I do to help those who are ol­der than we are?

If on­ly we could al­wa­ys bear in mind the Gol­den Rule of the Bib­le: “So wha­te­ver you wish that ot­hers would do to you, do al­so to them” (Matt. 7:12).

Sirk­ka Suo­mi­nen

Trans­la­ti­on: S.-L.L.

The blog post was pub­lis­hed in on­li­ne Päi­vä­mies on 8 Jun. 2015.