Being in isolation is just fine for ‘Lones’
A growing number of older Canadians know solitary life works just fine
In late February, I heard a tapping outside my house, as if someone was hammering nails into the side of a barn and had no intention of giving up until the job was complete. It persisted, off and on, stopping only when darkness fell, and starting up again at dawn.
At first, the sound didn’t really register, lost as it was in the drone of the day, in the chatter of passersby, in the hum of the traffic, in the shrieks of children playing, in the distant rumble of freight trains traversing the edge of the river.
But several weeks on, the world outside is somewhat more still, and the tap-tap-tap now echoes down the quiet street, reminding one that a single hard-working woodpecker boring a perfectly round hole in the side of an elementary school cares not about human dilemma, but is aware only that spring is unfolding across the land, that the lilacs and rhododendrons are in bloom, and that Mother Nature is a relentless taskmaster.
That woodpecker, like all of us, is hardwired to survive.
I am what you might call a Lone, a solo dweller, and there are legions of us in this country. According to the last census, one in four of us over the age of 65 lives alone, and the number is growing. More than four million Canadians, in fact, live in a single-person household.
We Lones are a demographic stew, batching it by circumstance or choice, holing up in houses and condos, basement suites and retirement homes. We can be hermits or social butterflies, active or idle or even working from home, but what we all have in common is a shared skill: we have perfected the art of solitude.
We know what it’s like to have only one heartbeat in the house, to understand that the best thing about waking up alone on Sunday morning is also the worst thing about waking up alone on Sunday morning.
And so, in the time of COVID-19, we carry on, unfazed by temporary inconvenience or pressures to step up our quarantine game.
My back deck is still in need of a gifted carpenter, there is no compulsion to foster a sourdough starter, and there will never be a jigsaw puzzle hogging the table top.
If the dusting and vacuuming remain neglected, then things are as they have always been. If the garden still resembles a backcountry buggy wildness, so be it.
For these are my dangling carrots of normality and, I suspect, it’s the same for all my fellow Lones who have lived by themselves for so long that mandated disconnect means nothing more than another day rattling around the homestead.
I’m a lucky Lone. I have everything I need, including health, mobility and a full pantry. Oh, there are missing pieces, even for those of us used to seclusion. The aching absence of family hugs. The local coffee shop. Fresh salmon sashimi. Shopping just for fun.
Otherwise, it is business as usual. Crosswords to complete. Chats across the fence. The news on cable, a loony tiger man on Netflix. There are emails to write and Facetime sessions, and all the standard daily dispatches from the inside out, only now with the delicious anticipation of socially distanced porch visits and driveway drop-ins with the grandchildren.
This Lone is musing more than usual, about societal wastefulness and comfort in the basics, about a world that is both falling apart and coming together.
But this much I know is true: Life in solitary isn’t so bad.
And, always, there is the relentless tap-tap-tap of a single woodpecker, driven by the promise of the future and the magic of optimism.