People? They are lonelier than ever before

I’ve often told co-workers about an elderly man who used to call me every week when I was city editor at The Hour newspaper in Norwalk to find out what time the NY Giants were playing and what station was broadcasting the game.

At the time of that first call, I was rather annoyed at the request and it probably came through. After all, according to him, he had the newspaper, so why should I have to look up the listing for him?

Then he told me he was 90 years old and didn’t see so well. So, with the belt of guilt taking swipes at me and respect for seniors climbing all over my conscience, I gave him the information.

He called again the following weekend, requesting the same information and spoke briefly about the Giants and his displeasure at their record.

But it wasn’t until the third week and the third call, when he went into more depth about the Giants’ season, that I realized he wasn’t calling for information at all.

He was lonely and needed to hear and interact with a human voice — something more than a commentator doing play-by-play. He had no one to play armchair quarterback with; nobody to cheer the touchdown or bemoan the interception.

It was a sobering experience for me to learn that we could go through life only to be left lonely at the end.

Fifty-one years ago, Paul McCartney wrote lyrics in a song called Eleanor Rigby that asked a question that is even more relevant now: “All the lonely people. Where do they all come from?”

A new report about loneliness and the devastating effects it is having on people answers a lot of questions. It got me to thinking about that man who used to call me and writing this column, which admittedly is different than what I normally write.

The study by The Campaign to End Loneliness Research Hub shows that loneliness and social isolation are not good for our overall health, and the lack of social connections is a risk factor comparable to smoking just under a pack of cigarettes a day.

That’s bad news and the news doesn’t get better.

The study also found that loneliness is worse for people than obesity and physical inactivity, and increases the chances of early death by 26 percent.

Many older people are not in frequent contact with family members or even neighbors — sometimes connecting with one or the other as little as once a month. It’s no wonder that up to 16 percent of seniors over 65 feel lonely all the time.

That is not exactly an ideal situation as more than half of seniors 75 and older live alone. Sadly, for nearly 4 million seniors nationwide, the voices on their television sets are their only daily companions.

Writing this column, I recalled the last year my mother lived in a senior complex in Middletown. Her neighbors marveled at how she was always surrounded by her family. I was puzzled by the comments until one of the woman talked about her proud she was of her son, who was a lawyer. She said she hadn’t seen him in more than a year because he was so busy. He lived in Connecticut, less