by Joyce Ann Mercer, CALLING ALL YEARS GOOD: CHRISTIAN VOCATION THROUGHOUT LIFE’S SEASONS, Kathleen A. Cahalan and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, editors, pgs. 190-191
Those in the initial phases of older adulthood often note the way that gradually the deaths of friends and loved ones become less of an exceptional occurrence and more the norm. A central characteristic of this stage of life is the inevitability and constancy of loss. The regularity of loss accelerates across subsequent years, such that people in their seventies and beyond begin to speak of “outliving all my friends” or being the only one left in their families so that “it all ends with me.”
With the death of age-mates comes an increasing sense that there is no one who can listen to and validate the stories of one’s experiences of growing old. There is a loneliness inherent in losing the people who hold our stories with us.
…One of the most common experiences named by older adults is loneliness. As loss becomes cumulative and social supports diminish, there is the general loneliness of having too few companions. Sometimes retirement and its aftermath awakens the relational emptiness that can characterize this life period, a state particularly common among men in late adulthood who were socialized to form relationships in and around work roles.
…If loneliness is common, one of the most evident forms of loneliness in older adulthood is that which overtakes a person after the death of a spouse or partner. In John Bowlby’s studies on attachment, he identified a phenomenon he termed “pining away,” the intense yearning after the loss of an intimate relationship…The specificity of spousal loss cannot be ameliorated by adding other relationships such as friends or additional companions, as if the loneliness were generic That does not mean that a person suffering such a loss is not aided by support and friendship Older adults who have extensive social support suffer less from depression. Loneliness thus becomes one of the challenging staples of older adult life.
How might the loneliness of old age relate to vocation in this life phase? If we understand vocation not as a possession, something an individual “has,” but rather as an interaction with God’s purposes that takes place within a relational ecology in which one participates with others, then it seems possible to imagine loneliness in older adulthood evoking the community’s capacities to provide a web of relationships in which older adults can grieve well. In turn, older adults suffering losses in the midst of the community “teach us how to grow through losses instead of being defeated by them,” writes Paul J. Wadell in “The Call Goes On: Discipleship and Aging.”
