Participant ID: P14
Pseudonym: Kenji
Age: 60
Gender: Man
Occupation: Recently retired (former civil engineer)
Living situation: Lives alone in a 1-bedroom apartment in Burnaby
Relevant context: Came out as gay last year after 32 years of marriage; estranged from ex-wife and two adult sons (ages 30, 28); third-generation Japanese-Canadian
Interview date: 2025-12-01
Interview length: 47 minutes
Interviewer: R2
Location: Kenji's apartment

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I: Thanks for inviting me in, Kenji. Tell me about yourself.

P: Sure. I'm 60, I retired from civil engineering last December. I came out to my wife and my sons last spring. We — we are separated, my wife and I. Working through divorce paperwork. My sons aren't speaking to me right now. My younger son said some things to me that I can't really repeat. So I have, basically, started a new life at 60. Which is, you know, unusual.

I: When you hear loneliness, what comes to mind?

P: My sons. That's what I think of. Not the romantic loneliness — I have, actually, a partner now, a man I'm seeing, his name is David, that part of my life is working. The loneliness for me is what I lost by coming out. Which is my children. I have not spoken to my older son in seven months. The younger one will respond to texts but coldly. So the loneliness is the absence of my children, even though they are alive and in the same city.

I: How does it feel?

P: It's a specific kind of grief. It's worse than if they had died, in some ways, because I caused this and I could undo it by going back, except I can't go back, because the truth is the truth. So the loneliness has a guilty texture to it. It is — it is loneliness with shame in it. I made a choice that produced this. That changes the flavour.

I: Is it different from being alone?

P: Yes. I have lived a long married life. Being alone is new to me. I'm learning that. Some of it I like. I have an apartment that I decorated. I cook for myself. There is a freedom that — at 60 — feels late but also feels like its own gift. But the loneliness from my sons is not about being alone. They could be living with me and I would still be lonely for them, because the version of relationship we had — me as their father, the man they thought I was — that version is dead. And the new version hasn't been born yet, and may not be.

I: Tell me about a recent example.

P: My older son's birthday last month. I sent a card and a gift. He returned the gift. The card came back marked "return to sender". And I sat with that for, you know, several days. My partner was very kind. But there is no one who can take the place of my son not wanting to know me. So the loneliness was very acute that week.

I: Have you found things that help?

P: Yes. Several things. First, my partner. David is — he has been through his own version of this, he came out at 45. He understands. Second, I joined a group for late-life-coming-out men. There are six of us, we meet once a month, all of us in our fifties or sixties. We get each other's specific pain. Third — and this is going to sound strange — I have started doing tea ceremony. My grandmother used to do it. I never paid attention as a kid. I started taking lessons six months ago. The discipline of it, the silence, the focus — it has been very settling for me. I think about my grandmother. I think about being Japanese in a way I didn't pay attention to during my marriage.

I: What didn't work?

P: I tried to write letters to my sons. Long ones, explaining everything. I never sent them. I think that was wise. The letters were too much about me defending myself and not enough about them. I'm not ready to write the right letter yet.

I: Have you sought professional help?

P: Yes. I have a therapist who specialises in family rupture. She has been good for me. She is helping me understand that the work right now is to be a man my sons might want to know someday, not to convince them today. That has been a hard reframe but a useful one.

I: What does your loneliness tell you?

P: That love takes a long time to repair. That coming out at 60 has costs I am still discovering. That I would do it again — I had to do it, I could not live as the man I had been — but the costs are real and I will carry them for the rest of my life. The loneliness for my sons is, I think, going to be permanent to some degree. Even if they come back, the old version is gone.

I: Do you think of yourself as a lonely person?

P: I think of myself as a man who has chosen a new life that contains specific lonelinesses. The romantic part is good. The professional part — retirement — has its own quietness I am still adjusting to. The family part is the loss. So one of three parts of life is loud with loneliness, and the other two parts are okay.

I: Anything that helped that surprised you?

P: A neighbour. I have a neighbour in this building, a Filipina woman, she's a nurse, she works at VGH. She knocks on my door sometimes with food. She doesn't know my full story but she has, I think, intuited that I am alone in some way. The kindness of strangers, you know. It has carried me.

I: If you could change one thing?

P: I would want there to be more space for late-life change in our culture. We talk as if life is decided by 30. It is not. I am 60 and I have started over. There are many of us. We should not be invisible.

I: Anything I haven't asked?

P: Just — my sons. I want them to know, when they read this someday or hear about this someday or in whatever future this is read, that I love them and I am here. That is the message I would put in a bottle and throw at the universe. I love them. I am here.
