The stress of loneliness

features in a piece in this morning's paper. The writer is saying that the stress from loneliness can be as damaging to health as smoking and obesity.
One of the Senior Cat's rare complaints recently has been that he misses people coming into the house - and thus having someone other than me with whom he can have a conversation. He has talked to several friends on the phone but it is "not the same thing". He is not getting out, not even outside some days. (I admit that I now hold my breath as he negotiates the back door despite the little ramp and the grab rail.) If it is fine enough and warm enough and he is out then I use his other walker as a tea trolley and take his morning or afternoon tea outside. That way he can at least watch the birds and, should the neighbourhood cat happen to call, they will have a conversation of sorts.
And, as the Senior Cat has said, he has me as some sort of company. Some people have none at all. I have been anxious about some of the older people I normally keep a watch on. They seem to have coped but they have needed reassurance that at least I have not forgotten them. One has a son living less than five minutes away in a car. He has not even spoken to her in over a month. She phoned him recently but his wife said he was "out". He has not bothered to return the call.  I have met him and he strikes me as simply not interested. If I asked him whether he loved his mother he would almost certainly say "yes". He just doesn't see communicating with her as important.
I was talking to someone else yesterday. She stopped me to say that they could not find the Power of Attorney for the man who recently had a stroke. I had to say, "There isn't one. I downloaded the form and did all the necessary preparations but C... never got around to signing it." I suspect he did not want to do it. He never saw himself as being in the position where someone else might have to manage his affairs. Now there will need to be a guardianship order instead. 
"And I know when he started to go downhill," I said, "It was when the dog died. He didn't have to get out and walk the dog."
She agreed. Getting out and walking the dog had brought this man into contact with other people. I first met him through the dog - the dog having escaped the back garden and having been firmly returned by me. Without his dog this man was not simply alone but lonely. 
He would not have recognised that. I am certain he saw himself as self-sufficient and not in need of the company of others. The woman who went in once a fortnight to clean for him stopped me one day and said she was worried about the way he just sat there and said so little. All I could do was talk to him when I saw him. He seemed to welcome that. He would go as far as to wave to me and stop me as I passed - but what is a few minutes of conversation in a lonely week? He was depressed. Depression is stressful, often incredibly stressful.
There are other lonely people around here. I know I can't care for all of them. I know some of them have family who could help - and all too often don't. There is someone I know who lives a short distance from me. She has three sons but sees very little of them. In more normal times she does get out a bit because she belongs to several groups. Right now that isn't happening. We might be able to go to the pub for a drink but we still can't go to a special interest gardening or craft group. I hope people like her will be able to go back to their groups - and that those groups will have survived. Until then - family matters.
My extended clan has been in touch with one another - "just checking". We won't see one another as we are scattered across the globe but, somehow, it seems important to keep a watchful eye on each other. The Senior Cat's equally elderly cousin will phone me tonight. I will inquire about her day - she will tell me what book she is reading and whether anyone has called in. It will give me news of a slightly younger cousin some thousands of kilometres away. I will tell her that a cousin in London called "just to check" and that a very distant cousin in Canada has sent an email. 
As a clan we are fortunate, very fortunate - but we have also worked at it. Such things do not come automatically.
It is easier than ever to make contact with others but "liking" a tweet or a post is not friendship. Friendship requires an effort - something we are not always prepared to make. Laziness is contributing to loneliness.