is loneliness part of middle age?
Entry posted by swilkinson
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I seem to be lonely again. It happens from time to time, the usual routine folds up for some reason, Ray gets extra tired so we don't go out as much. Then the family get busy, busy busy with their own lives and we hardly see them. The world around us seems to grow quiet, Ray goes off for a nap and I am left here feeling lonely and a little out of sorts and maybe a bit sorry for myself.
I don't think this is altogether about being a caregiver to a stroke survivor although that has certainly changed our lives. I think it has a lot to do with being middle aged. I look around and others seem to have so much to do and we don't. I know that is partly because we don't have a lot of money to spend on pursuits and besides we also don't have the energy. Isn't this what I asked for this year? Peace and quiet? But sometimes it is too peaceful and too quiet.
I have just finished watching "My big fat Greek wedding." I remember some of the migrant families who lived in the town where I grew up, they seemed to have so many cousins, aunts and uncles, aged grandmothers dressed in black, old grandfathers with moustaches and walking sticks that they would wave at us kids. Ah, how lucky I thought they were because at my place there was just Mum and Dad and my sister and I. The typical English migrants - Mum, Dad and two children. This was the start of what was going to be called the nuclear family.
When we left England to come to Australia I guess some of our relatives got offended. I know when I went back to England one of my pricklier second cousins said:"I don't know why you had to go to that place. What was wrong with you staying here? Why did your parents have to drag you half way across the world?"
I guess that is a valid question and one all of our migrant ancestors have had to answer at one time or another. I think to Dad who was four years a prisoner-of-war in Germany the England he returned to was not the England of his dreams so he decided to make a fresh start. He tried living in the village where Mum had come from but we lived in a cottage "tied" to a job and when he got sick and couldn't do the job anymore (long story) he also needed to look for somewhere else to live, so rather than move a couple of villages away they moved all the way to Australia.
Not a bad move, we all loved it here, Mum maybe less than the rest of us, but truly there are opportunities here that Dad would not have had back in England. What we lost was that large extended family that I sometimes so long for. The family of "My big fat Greek wedding." Of course it would not have been like that with them scattered all over England, the families in Canada etc. But we would have seen some of them and kept up with others by mail etc.
Email and modern technology have made a vast difference to keeping in touch with family, and those extended family fourth, fifth and sixth cousins I have found through doing genealogy. But it can't replace the call-in-and-have a cuppa family. Or the come-to-our-wedding family or the cousins, ancient aunts etc that the Greek and Italian families of my youth had. Being part of a nuclear family can be very isolating.
I guess we all yearn for things we don't have, closer relationships, warmer relationships, even noisier relationships. Middle age can be a time of great adjustment, factor in stroke and that can be huge adjustment.
To look at me, a middle aged woman, a little overweight, always ready with a smile, a kind word or a helping hand, you would never see the lonely person I sometimes am. Sure I have plenty to do to keep me busy, too much if you look around and see the ironing has turned back into a mountain again and the potplants are peering out through a veil of weeds. But despite all that sometimes I have enough time to feel a little lonely. Like tonight.
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