Post Morbus

Mr. Tucker and I had an old friend and his new partner over for a BBQ and swimming over the long weekend. When I left social media I started to reach out to folks that I wanted to see but hadn’t seen in a really long time [1]. So after a month of trying to solidify plans, we finally nailed out a Saturday that worked for all of us. Sadly, it was cold and rainy that day but we still got to hang out, eat and play games. It was a good night.

When catching up with people you haven’t seen in awhile, the questions always run from “what have you been doing all of these years?” to “so what do you do with your free time now?” But what was interesting about my friend is that he answered the second question with, “I dunno. I go to work. I come home. I nap. I hang out. I go to bed. On the weekends you just clean and do chores and then it’s back to work. I’m too tired to do much else.” It just struck me as incredibly sad probably because he sounded a bit sad about it. Of course, when I asked followup questions he clearly did other things! They shared a love of eating out, and playing games, and they have animals they adore. It was just the absolutely depressing way he answered the original question that stuck with me.

It stuck with me because I have been there, too.

It’s so easy to fall into a rut. Work + commuting + personal care + household chores can easily eat into every moment of the day so that it is easier to just flop in front of electronics for the evening and passively consume content. Toss children & their activities into the mix and it feels like the time you have for friends is less than zero…

When I was 14 we moved in with my grandmother. She had been raised in a vibrant French Canadian community in Lowertown. Every one knew everyone, and every holiday saw friends and family cramming into the house all day long. Families back then lived inter-generationally because things were expensive (and predates socialized health care). When she married my Irish grandfather, he was going to university and working, so he moved into her family home with her. A few years after my mother was born, they moved to their own apartment across the street. Apparently my great-grandmother cried because she thought she’d never see them! After my grandfather graduated, they did what all people did in the 50s: they bought a house in the suburbs. My great-grandmother cried again: they were moving to the end of the world! It must have seemed like it, a street car came about a 15-minute walk away – and it was the end of the line.

When people romanticize the mid-century era, I see it as the beginning of where things started to crumble for community. For my grandmother, it certainly was. My grandfather apparently found her loud, French-Canadian family embarrassing and wanted to distance himself from them as much as possible. I can’t blame him for that, really. Raised by a widow who had left Ireland for opportunity, she was determined that ALL five of her children (including the girls – scandal!) would be university educated and successful (they were). So part of that was blending into the WASP culture that surrounded them and meeting the milestones of success for that era (they did). Meanwhile, the speed of progress was progressing and the urban planners tore through Lowertown removing its streets, demolishing its houses, rerouting the veins of the community. Many families who had been there for generations scattered out of the downtown core.

I don’t think my grandmother ever felt she fit into her new life and she failed to make many friends in their new neighbourhood. Once my uncle went to school, she asked her husband if she could go back to work for something to do. She was bored, and for someone who had worked since she was a pre-teen, it was strange to be bored. She picked up a job at a local perfume factory during the day and still managed to be home in time to make dinner. She kept all the money from this job in a savings account because my grandfather gave her money to run the house with. There is a funny family story about how she really wanted a garage built where the carport was. My grandfather apparently said, “I can’t afford that!” to which she responded, “But I can!” He was shocked at how much she had saved from what he considered to be her little hobby job. She got her garage.

Sadly, she lost her father in 1971 and in 1974 she lost her mother and her husband in the same year. The perfume factory also shut down and she didn’t go back to work again. Previously, my grandparents had been devout Catholics but she gave up going to church at this point, apparently saying that she was angry at God for taking husband away from her at such a young age. He was 54.

I would be born a year later and a few years after, my brother came along. My parents split up soon after that and my grandmother pinch hit for child rearing for much of my childhood. I remember that she had a couple of friends that she played BINGO with or with whom she would spend the day with at the racetrack. But people move and people pass away and soon she had no one but family. Then, when my brother and I were old enough, we didn’t need her either. She stopped coming to the house to take care of us and just stayed home. We saw her on weekends and holidays…until we had to move in with her.

I loved my grandmother and was extremely close with her but I don’t think moving in with her was the best thing we could have done FOR her (although financially, I know we had no other option). Soon after we moved in she started drinking more, she stopped leaving the house and she stopped doing the basics of personal care. My mom did everything she needed done: cooked, cleaned, paid the bills, got money out for her etc. I was the one who introduced her to dial-a-bottle, so that is on me, to be fair. But she became a recluse whose agoraphobia limited her to leaving the house about once a year to walk to the end of the driveway and back.

She died in my first year of university and it felt like a huge wake up call for me: I, too, had been struggling with making friends. At her funeral I imagined what my life would be like if I continued like this. Many of my friends had left the city for university, I had a relationship that focused on his friends – who I lost when it ended – and I was surrounded by a lot of acquaintances but few friends. The final years of my grandmother’s life hung like a fog over me but I swore I would make the effort. It took me awhile to find my footing but eventually I did make friends – and continued to make friends – all throughout my life. I am very grateful for that.

But I tell this (long) tale for two reasons:
1 – My grandmother’s life is not exceptional. She basically woke up one day and realized that it was all gone. Her relationships slowly eroded for the same reasons all of ours do: time, geography, responsibilities, child-rearing, exhaustion, death. It was easier to drink beer and watch game shows. These are all things we can relate to.

2 – Your relationships require care and feeding. When my kids were born our main friend group was all child free (or child-grown) adults with professional jobs for the most part[2]. I was a SAHM and Mr. Tucker worked insane hours. At the time, our friends were out doing things that were way out of our budget BUT we always made an effort to go to the house parties and the milestone events. We also made a bunch of new friends with people who had kids. It was nice to have events where the parents could just have a drink and not worry about our kids running wild (because they also let their kids run wild!).

Relationships also ebb and flow and it’s ok to let some people go[3]. But it’s not ok to let everyone go – even when you are at your busiest – because some day you will wake up and everyone will be gone.

This is why my friend’s words struck me so deeply: he clearly enjoyed getting together, he was interested in reviving some of his hobbies but he just hadn’t gotten around to it. Life had gotten away from him. But I was really happy to see him and to catch up. Maybe we will only be able to get together once or twice a year – and that’s ok! But it was nice to connect – not just interact with him as text on a screen. Had our conversation played out over our phones, I probably wouldn’t have noted anything about the words, “I dunno. I go to work. I come home. I nap. I hang out. I go to bed. On the weekends you just clean and do chores and then it’s back to work. I’m too tired to do much else.” and I probably would have just replied, “Haha no kidding, I feel that friend!” But so much more communication happens in person and with someone’s body language and facial expressions. Getting together with people is important.

I know since the pandemic a lot of life has moved online and we all know its to our detriment. But even before the pandemic an acquaintance of mine who does psychology research tried to run an experiment to compare elderly people – those who had a close group of friends and those who had few or no friends. He had planned to study the effects of loneliness. He ended up having to scrap the entire study because he couldn’t find enough older people to be in the control group! So many of us are living without friends.

I came across this documentary about the cost of living crisis in the UK. It’s older but the themes are the same. Ostensibly, it is about lack of money amongst pensioners but the thing that stood out for me was just how lonely these folks are. One woman had only two people knock on her door in the 35 years she lived in her apartment. One man laid out his last will and testament before he went to sleep each night in case they found his body because he had no one to give the responsibility to.

Like my grandmother, they got lonely slowly over a period of time and then suddenly: no one.

Multiple think pieces have been written on this. But the reality is, introvert or an extrovert: we all need to be social because humans are social creatures. We have different tolerance levels of socialization but we all need to interact with people, in person. Whoever tells you otherwise has shares in Meta. For some people it may be once a week and for others every day. I can’t determine that level for you. But you need it.

But the thing is: I have hope. I find people are making more plans again to get out and do things, even taking walks. I am the parent of two teenagers and I find that this year there have been more sleepovers, more hangout dinners & movie nights, more weekend conventions and more bowling with friends. They just enjoy being in each others company. Sure, they have group chats and Discord but overall I have definitely noticed an uptick in social events since September.

The kids are alright, and they’re touching grass. We all need to touch grass.