Joyce Fegan: How do you count the cost of loneliness?

While individually we may feel powerless to slow climate change, end a pandemic, avoid a recession, or reverse the terminal illness of a loved one, loneliness is one thing we have the day-to-day ability to address and it is incumbent on us to do so.

FOR a few days in June it was perfect. The house was in Connemara, on the road out from Clifden, heading towards Cleggan. First to arrive were my
parents, in their 70s, and their dog.

We got pictures “on the WhatsApp” of sunset from the cottage — its position to the degree and its time to the second. My sister and her twins arrived next. And with them the WhatsApp communications pivoted to the practical, with notes around bedroom arrangements and reminders to pack the “blackout blinds” — as essential to parenting as soothers, snacks, scooters, and screen time.

We arrived next. We left at bedtime so our baby could sleep for the four-hour car journey out West. She woke in Athlone, at McDonald’s to be exact. We arrived at 11pm, 100,000 green bottles hanging on the wall later.

She was carried into the old stone cottage, in the parental hope of a ‘transfer’. No such luck. It would be 1am before the excitement would allow her to nod off again.

There were three or four days of three generations, siblings, in-laws, grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins, and canines all under one roof. The wake times went like this — like dominos. First the baby circa 6am, and her parents, next the twins around 7am, the next adult rose at 8am and then finally the grandparents around 9am, despite the many visits to their bedroom in the preceding few hours.

Breakfast ran for hours, with many eating twice, as children circled the cottage’s rocky perimeter and ran rings around all in their crocs. The day ran on, interrupted only by naps and trips to the newest beach, before we settled on our favourite — one of those without parking and known to few.

When evening came it was all gas cylinders and mismatched cutlery as we tried to barbecue outside of our normal habitat. There was pizza too, everyone assembling their own. One of the toppings, much to a mother’s delight, was chocolate. 

There was a bench out the back, and you could look over to Omey Island. And there were the midges circling overhead. Christy Moore Live at the Point played in the dusky background.

It was the opposite of loneliness.

I thought: “This is how we were probably meant to live.” In generations, in contact, in communication.

Last week on this page, Síona Cahill wrote about our so-called return to normal: “Fine? We’re not fine. I’m not fine. I’m a shell of a woman. Like most, I’m keeping a sunny disposition on Instagram and doing my best at work. I don’t think anyone is actually fine.”

I’m glad someone finally said it.

I shared it with people, other people shared it with me. Some people took screengrabs or highlighted the line that hit them the hardest.

Two weeks ago, I came across a very elderly man in my local Lidl. I’d never seen him there before. I’ve spent the best part of 18 months going down there for milk and blueberries and chocolate. I know most of its clientele and I’m on first-name terms with most of the staff.

This man was walking very slowly and was wearing heavy orthopaedic shoes. Unbeknownst to him, his mask had slipped below his nose. My husband had gone ahead with the baby and our few bits. I was still wandering the middle aisles — an acceptable outing in this day and age. 

When I finally caught up with them, they were queuing. A man with a young baby and a bag of new potatoes was queuing too. So was the elderly man. The guy with the baby let him go on ahead. He gratefully accepted. We did the same.

On the belt in front of us, he slowly placed his two items — two cans of Guinness. He then made sure to place the little bar behind his goods, so we could place ours.

Retrieving two cans of Guinness of a Tuesday evening is now this man’s outing. 

For how many months did that man go without seeing a single soul? What is the cost of all our loneliness?

At the beginning of the pandemic there was the novelty of restrictions, and the honesty that the novelty provoked in our conversations. We asked one another how we were.

The pretense that we are all always fine finally got lifted. Thank God. Huge efforts were made to arrange virtual table quizzes, 60th-birthday calls, and online murder-mystery nights.

Then I suppose maybe we all got a bit sick of Zoom. The restrictions eased somewhat, summer came, the vaccines rolled out, and off we went on our staycations and whatnot.

It is like we all thought “we are back to normal now”. But we are not.

On Thursday, we counted 1,903 new cases. But how do you count the cost of loneliness?

It seems now that loneliness has become part of the fabric of our lives. We’ve got used to it. But remember when we used to express how awful it must be for those who had lost someone in the pandemic, left to grieve alone? 

Remember when we used to express how difficult it must be to be in a nursing home? Remember when there was at least an acknowledgement of the hardship of this and a camaraderie in our loneliness?

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It is nearly four years since loneliness was deemed as dangerous to our health as smoking.

“It turns out that loneliness is associated with a reduction in your lifespan that is as severe as the lifespan you see with smoking 15 cigarettes a day,” the former US surgeon general Dr Vivek Murthy said.

This, coupled with the Harvard longitudinal survey of 268 men over 80 years, which was published in the same year and looked at the secret to health and happiness, put loneliness on the map. The 80-year study found that relationships were the secret to health and happiness.

“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” said director of the study Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

We’ve talked a lot about the economic impact of the pandemic, the effect on our cities, jobs, and businesses. We’ve talked about its effect on the arts and sports — but what about community, the voluntary groups that knit up our lives?

People living with addiction — what’s happened to their 12-step groups? For parents, there are few supports in terms of community care, no baby groups to attend to ease the day. What about active retirement groups or cancer-support groups?

The cost of loneliness may well be unquantifiable but its impact will be far-reaching. If you’re looking for it, psychologists say it lands in the chest and sits there like an ache.

While we may feel personally powerless to affect climate change, end a pandemic, avoid a recession, or reverse the terminal illness of a loved one, loneliness is one thing we actually have the day-to-day ability to address.

Make that call. Arrange to have a coffee. Organise a walk. Make the plan weekly. Be honest about how you’re feeling. Loneliness isn’t something to be ashamed of — it’s something that marks you out as a decent, caring human.