What lonely old women teach us

It was a blustery day in Lombardy in north Italy with gale force winds In the pretty town of Prestino sitting snug by Lake Como a Swiss resident called the police worried that some old trees in the estate of his neighbour Ms Beretta were in danger of being uprooted The polizia arrived soon but they could not have been remotely prepared for the sight that greeted themThe housersquos occupant 70yearold Marinella Beretta was seated at her kitchen table She had been dead for two years the ambient dryness and temperature had mummified her body where she satMarinellarsquos absence had not been missed since shersquod never been visibly active in the community Her neighbours simply assumed that she had relocated when the pandemic hit northern Italy in 2020An Italian journalist called Marinella ldquoloneliness personifiedrdquo ldquoNow people die alonerdquo he wrote ldquoAnd we live alone which is almost worserdquolsquoLonelinessrsquo is the wrong word here some people feel lonely even within crowds Studies have found that the killer is isolation the social equivalent of being stranded on a desert island The pandemic dramatically increased social isolation apparently more among women than menConfirming this is a study released six days ago by the Womenrsquos Health Initiative which covered over 27400 women aged between 71 and 104 and showed that loneliness increased among women during the pandemic and more than it did for menThere is a unique mixture of sadness and stoicism in women who live alone in their declining years Marinella was just a chilling reminder of what the end can look like for an elderly person living socially isolatedYou donrsquot have to travel to Italy to find women alone in old age I know three in India all older than Marinella who were living alone and socially isolated well before the pandemic and through it I was among a few that stayed in touch with themJaya was 84 and lived alone in Chennai even her lifersquos comforting memories erased by dementia She did not know who she was who her children were nor what to do if she were to slip and fall in the showerAn old family retainer tended to her needs reporting weekly to her son in England for updates and instructions A few months ago Jaya quietly left her body after nearly a decade of cloudy living I remember the younger version of her a sassy compassionate woman with wicked eyes and a reputation as a tough classy thespian directorOne of the few friends who stayed in touch with Jaya while she could was her friend Anu living alone elsewhere in Chennai From an oldwealth family of Jamshedpur Anu had lived a refined artistic life as a model actress and socialite Both women had been popular socially vibrant page three personalities in their timeThen one by one Anu lost her superpowers In old age she now haunts her once thrumming house navigating its rooms painfully with a walker and issuing instructions for the dayrsquos lunch to an old khansamaAnu has already broken a wrist a hip bone an ankle and a shoulder blade and though all have healed these days she mostly lies in bed rereading classics She lives with her memories and family antiques in a sepia house with few visitors When there is a caller though Anu takes copious notes afraid that her diaphanous memory will retain nothing that was saidDaphnersquos story may be the saddest A widow like Jaya and Anu she lived a highly public life in Bengaluru known for audacious projects that brought better health to children and elderly people far awayShe was a charming indomitable woman of relentless optimism and generosity Her work was acclaimed and duplicated globally though she remained unknown nationally Her wide circle of friends adored her her house was always full of visitors and stories of people and placesAs the twin monsters of feebleness and dementia crept up on her Daphnersquos children all far away decided she was best kept in isolation to protect her from herself Her friends were requested to stop visiting her and her moments and movements were carefully monitored by dayandnight nurses and house help The woman whorsquod always lived alone was now isolated as wellDaphne passed away some months ago Because of the pandemic the funeral was attended by just a handful of people She died as though she hadnrsquot ever lived in isolationLest we blame all this on a virus let me add that for some time we have been turning into a society that forgets its elderly when they start needing our time and care A journalist writing about Marinella Beretto wrote this blunt indictment ldquoThe real sadness is not that the others did not notice her death It is that they did not realise she was aliverdquoNOTE Names locations and some life details have been changed to honour individual privacyHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper