Loneliness is common in seniors, and its grip on those feeling it can lead to declining health and elder abuse. Rafaella Melo reports for her The Years Ahead series.
When Mary’s* husband died, the support was everywhere.
Friends checked in, family rallied around. Meals were brought around, phone calls came in, comfort was offered.
But as the weeks turned into months, life slowly returned to normal for everyone else.
Not for her.
“The support drops off very quickly,” the Napier woman said.
“It’s nobody’s fault. People’s lives are busy.”
More than three years after losing her husband to lung cancer, Mary still sometimes wakes to the silence beside her.
Read the full article in the NZ Herald.
*Name has been changed.