Why laughter is the best medicine for the lonely this season
For anyone without family close by, the festive season can feel isolating. But help is at hand. Rosa Silverman meets some of those saved by Silver Line volunteers
Before she was widowed, Christmas was a wonderful time of year for Celia Parsons, just as the greetings cards and carols suggest it ought to be.
“We had three daughters, two dogs, a marvellous house and I wanted for nothing,” recalls Celia. “I was so happy.”
But in 1990, four years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Celia’s husband died.
She has been on her own ever since. And at this time of year, for Celia – and others like her – the seemingly ubiquitous jollity and the sight of others’ festivities serve as a cruel reminder of everything they themselves lack.
“I’ve been a widow a very long time and have spent many Christmases on my own,” says Celia. “When you’re on your own for Christmas, you really want to isolate yourself from the whole thing. You want to hide away. You don’t want to see anybody or talk to anybody. You know that no one will phone you.”
No one, that is, except The Silver Line, the confidential telephone helpline that offers older people information, friendship and advice, and which The Telegraph is supporting as part of its Christmas charity campaign.
“I have a wonderful Line lady who phones me every Sunday morning and brings the weekend to life,” Celia says of her Silver Line “friend”, one of the charity’s volunteers who provides weekly calls to those aged 55 and over longing for regular contact.
It was a different Silver Line volunteer who transformed Celia’s Christmas a couple of years ago.
“I was chatting to a wonderful man called Kenny, and he asked what I was doing for Christmas,” she recalls. “I said, ‘Nothing, I’ll just spend it on my own.’ He said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to go out?’ And I thought: ‘Well, I would, actually.’”
Kenny told Celia about a project called Community Christmas, run by an organisation called Re-engage.
“I knew nothing about it,” says Celia, who used to run a music school in Wendover, Buckinghamshire. “But a few calls were made. I was asked what I wanted for Christmas lunch. I was told to be ready [on the day] and a car would come to get me.”
Christmas Day 2017 arrived, and Celia went to wait outside her block of flats near Winchester, Hants. What happened next was unexpected.
“A minute or two later, a big Rollsroyce swung into the drive and I thought, ‘Ooh, someone’s lucky, that’s a very posh car,’” she says. “A gentleman got out, looked up at me and said: ‘Are you Celia? I’m here for you.’ I said, ‘Good gracious me!’ It was the start of a wonderful day.”
The driver was a volunteer who gave up his Christmas Day every year to assist with Community Christmas’s endeavours. Thirty minutes later, Celia found herself in a local community hall, whereupon “all this food appeared”.
She received a goodie bag, won a raffle and met “a roomful of strangers”. “It was absolutely fabulous,” she says. “I just cried with joy.”
But the problem of having no one to break bread with is of course not confined to Christmas for isolated older people.
Last year, a Yougov poll found that the majority of those aged 75 and over in the UK (56 per cent) only ate with someone else once a week or less, while nearly one in five (19 per cent) were going three months or longer without sharing a meal with anyone.
But Christmas holds a special status, in being particularly sociable for those blessed with close family and friends – and particularly painful for those who aren’t.
In 2016, research commissioned by the Royal Voluntary Service found more than a quarter of those aged over 75 couldn’t wait for the day to be over. Some 11 per cent admitted they felt lonelier on Christmas Day than at any other time of the year. For more than half, it served as a poignant reminder of happier times and loved ones lost.
Gerard O’flynn, 76, from Manchester, is among this group. He has been on his own ever since his sister, with whom he lived, was killed by an intruder two days before Christmas 1976.
Until three years ago, all of his Christmases, loaded with dreadful memories and sadness, followed a dispiriting pattern: “I’d go to church in the morning, come home and eat a ready meal, watch TV and be bored. It’s just me here,” he says.
His nearest surviving relatives live about 20 miles away; others are in France. “You don’t get used to the loneliness, you just live with it,” he says. “A lot of the day, you’re on your own, with your thoughts. What’s needed is a good conversation with somebody, a laugh and a joke.”
Like Celia, he’s found comfort in having a Silver Line friend; and as with her, the charity has helped him find a way to avoid being alone on Christmas Day.
For the past three, they have arranged for him to attend a community dinner at a local junior school, where there’s food and musical entertainment. “It’s quite good,” says Gerard, who used to work for an engineering company. “There are different age groups present.”
He’s going back again this year, having asked the Silver Line’s Connects team to arrange it. The
‘What you need is a good conversation with someone – a laugh and a joke’
team forms another strand of the charity’s work, connecting older people with services and organisations in their area.
“I’ll go for the Christmas dinner, but after that I will be on my own,” says Gerard. “And being on your own at Christmas is not very nice at all. It drags, like a wet Sunday. But I’m glad when it’s come and gone.”
Before she was paired with her Silver Line friend, Celia also dreaded Sundays, as it was the weekday her husband died. At least she won’t be alone for Christmas this year, though. Instead, she is going to play bridge in a London hotel.
Would she consider another Community Christmas dinner? “I would certainly think of it,” she says. “You’ve got to be in the right frame of mind.”
But the charity has helped her no end, she enthuses. “They have in a sense saved my life. They’ve put life back into my situation.”