Participant ID: P11 Pseudonym: Helen Age: 78 Gender: Woman Occupation: Retired (former librarian) Living situation: Lives alone in a 1-bedroom apartment in West End Vancouver Relevant context: Never married, no children; uses a walker; macular degeneration limits reading and TV Interview date: 2025-11-21 Interview length: 42 minutes Interviewer: R1 Location: Helen's apartment --- I: Thank you for having me, Helen. Tell me about yourself. P: Well, dear, I'm 78, never married, no children. I was a librarian at the central branch downtown for 38 years. I retired in 2014. I have a brother in Ontario but we're not close. My eyesight has gone — macular degeneration — so I can't read anymore, which is the loss I grieve most. I can't really watch television well either. And I use this walker because my hip gave out two years ago. So my world is — small. It's a small world now. I: When you hear loneliness, what comes to mind? P: Days where I do not say a word out loud to another person. That happens regularly. I will get up, make my breakfast, listen to the radio, do my exercises, eat my lunch, do a crossword on the audio thing my niece set up, and go to bed. And I will not have spoken to anyone. Three or four days in a row, sometimes. And then I will go to the grocery store and the cashier will say "have a nice day" and I'll feel — I'll feel almost giddy from the contact. I: That's striking. How does it feel? P: It feels like — fading. Like fading at the edges. When you do not speak for days, you become less real to yourself. Your voice sounds strange when you do speak. The thoughts you've been having alone for three days come out and they are odd or repetitive and you realise nobody has been there to push back on them. That's the danger of it, I think. The fading. I: Is it different from being alone? P: I have lived alone all my adult life. I am very comfortable alone. The loneliness I have now is different from the solitude I had at 50, when I was alone and I worked all day with people and went home to my own quiet. Now alone is the default and I cannot escape from it as easily. My body cannot take me places. My eyes cannot bring the world to me. So the alone has become heavier. I: Has it changed in recent years? P: Oh yes. When my hip was good I went to concerts at the library, I went to the seniors' walking group, I went to my book club. The book club fell apart when I couldn't read anymore — they kept inviting me but listening to others discuss a book I haven't read is humiliating, so I stopped going. The walking group, I can't keep up. The library doesn't have programs the way it used to. And so my outside world has shrunk. I think that's just how it goes, dear. As you age, the world shrinks around you, until eventually it's just the room you're in. I: Have you tried anything that helps? P: Yes. I have a wonderful, wonderful service. Better at Home. They send a volunteer who comes once a week, her name is Marie, she's about 50, she does light cleaning and she'll have tea with me afterwards. Marie is the social event of my week. I look forward to Wednesdays like I used to look forward to Christmas. I have arranged my whole emotional week around Wednesdays. I: Anything else? P: There's a phone-pal program through the seniors' centre. A woman named Ruth phones me every Sunday at noon. I have never met her. We've been speaking for two years. She's 81, she lives in Maple Ridge. We talk for half an hour. I would say Ruth is now my closest friend in the world, and I have never seen her face. That is — that is a strange thing to be true. I: Have you sought professional help? P: My GP knows I'm lonely. He's gentle about it. He suggested antidepressants once and I declined. I don't want to be medicated for being old and alone — that seems like the wrong response to me. What I want is people. He couldn't prescribe people. I: What does your loneliness tell you? P: That I made certain choices long ago and now I am living with them. I did not marry. I did not have children. I had a long career I loved. I had a few significant friendships, most of those people are dead now. So my loneliness is — it is the consequence of a long life with particular shape. I do not regret the life. I do regret that I did not invest more in younger friends, because all my contemporaries are dying. If I could go back I would have made friends across generations, deliberately. I: Do you think of yourself as a lonely person? P: Yes, I do, at this point. I would not have said so twenty years ago. I am a lonely woman in her late seventies and I do not see this changing very much, because the structural conditions of my life are not going to change. I am not going to become more mobile. My eyes are not coming back. My friends are not coming back from being dead. So I have to live inside the loneliness rather than against it. That's been the work. I: Anything that helped that surprised you? P: The radio. CBC Radio Two, classical music in the mornings. The voices of the announcers feel like companions. I know that's silly. But Tom Allen has been with me for twenty years through the radio. I would miss him terribly if he stopped. I: If you could change one thing about how society handles loneliness? P: Visit your old people. That's it. Visit your old people, even when they're slow and hard to hear, even when they tell you the same story they told you last time, even when they don't know who you are anymore. Just visit. Most of us are lonely and most of you assume someone else is doing the visiting. Nobody is doing the visiting. The visiting must be done. I: Anything I haven't asked? P: Just — thank you for asking. This may be the longest conversation I have this week. I will think about this for days, in a good way. So thank you.