Participant ID: P20
Pseudonym: Frank
Age: 82
Gender: Man
Occupation: Retired (former carpenter, then small-business owner)
Living situation: Long-term care facility in Burnaby for 14 months
Relevant context: Widowed 11 years ago; two daughters, both in BC but busy; mild cognitive impairment, otherwise good health
Interview date: 2025-12-15
Interview length: 38 minutes
Interviewer: R2
Location: Frank's room in long-term care; staff briefed and consent re-confirmed

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I: Thanks for talking with me today, Frank. Tell me about yourself.

P: Well. I'm 82. Carpenter for forty years, ran my own shop for fifteen more after that. Married Janet in 1965, lost her in 2014. I have two daughters, Pat in Victoria and Sandy in Kelowna. Came in here, this place, about a year ago, fourteen months I guess. My memory's not what it was, that was the main reason. Otherwise I'm in pretty good shape for an old guy.

I: When I say loneliness, what comes to mind?

P: Old age, son. Old age is what comes to mind. Loneliness is the thing nobody warns you about when you get old. You think, when you're 60, oh, I'll have my friends, I'll have my wife, I'll have my routines. Then your wife dies. Then your friends die. Then you can't drive. Then you end up in a place like this. And every year there's less. So loneliness for me is — the inventory of what's missing keeps growing. Names, faces, the old shop, the old neighbourhood, the old jokes I used to share with people who are gone now. Loneliness is the empty space all those people used to fill.

I: That's a powerful way to put it. How does it feel?

P: Heavy. Just heavy. I sleep a lot. I think I sleep partly to be unconscious. Partly because I'm old and that's what we do. The body just wants to rest. I don't have a lot of pep anymore.

I: Is it different from being alone?

P: I'm not really alone here, you know? There's people. There's the staff, they're nice. There's other residents, some of them. There's activities. So I'm rarely alone the way you might mean. But I'm lonely. Because the people here, they're strangers, mostly. They don't know me from before. They know me as Frank in room 214 who likes pudding. They don't know I built houses. They don't know my Janet. They don't know my daughters as little girls. The whole story of me — most of it isn't accessible to anyone here. So I'm lonely with company.

I: Tell me about a recent moment.

P: My birthday last month. I turned 82. Sandy came down from Kelowna, brought me a cake. Pat called from Victoria. The staff sang. It was — it was nice. And then everyone left and I sat on the bed and I looked at the cake and I thought, well, that's that. Another one. And I missed Janet so much in that moment I almost couldn't breathe. Because Janet would have remembered the cake we had on our wedding day. Janet would have known how I take my tea. The girls love me but they don't have that — that particular catalogue. Janet had it. And there's nobody now who has it.

I: Do you have anyone you can talk to here?

P: There's a woman, Mavis, she's down the hall. We have coffee in the lounge most mornings. She's 79, she lost her husband three years ago. We don't talk about anything heavy. We talk about the weather, the food, the news. But that's a kind of friendship. It's not what I had with Bert — Bert was my best friend for fifty years, he died in 2019. But it's something. Mavis is something.

I: What helps when loneliness shows up?

P: TV. Honestly. Reruns. I'll watch the old shows, MASH, Cheers, those ones. Familiar. Calming. The girls got me a — a magazine subscription, Cottage Life, I look at the pictures. I like to look at pictures of woodworking shops. Reminds me of when I was useful.

I: Do you still feel useful?

P: [long pause] Not very. I think that's a big part of the loneliness, actually, now that you ask. When you stop being useful, when you stop having a job to do, when no one needs anything from you — you become invisible to yourself in a way. So the loneliness is partly a loneliness from my own usefulness. I miss it. I miss being needed.

I: What didn't work?

P: They tried to get me to join the men's group here, the residents' men's group. They meet on Thursdays. I went twice. One of the guys is — he's had a stroke, he can't really talk. Two of them are pretty far gone. The other one is mean. So that wasn't for me. I stopped going.

I: Have you sought professional help?

P: They have a chaplain who comes around. He's a young guy, maybe 40. He's nice. We talk for half an hour every couple weeks. I'm not very religious anymore but I find I appreciate the conversations. He's a — he's a person who is paid to come and sit with me, but he does it in a way that doesn't feel paid for. So that's been a good thing. They have a counsellor too but I haven't done that. Not really my style.

I: What does your loneliness tell you?

P: That it's almost over. I mean — I'm 82, my body is winding down, I will not be here much longer, in the grand scheme. And the loneliness is, I think, partly the body's way of saying that. It's preparing me. I don't say that morbidly. I say it as a fact. There is a peace in it. The loneliness is — it's the empty space being prepared.

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

P: I think of myself as a lucky man who lived a full life and is now in the lonely part at the end of that life. The loneliness is not the whole story of me. The whole story includes 49 years with Janet. Two daughters I raised who turned out beautiful. Houses I built that are still standing in this city. Grandchildren who are alive. So the loneliness is just the chapter at the end of a good book.

I: Anything that helped that surprised you?

P: A volunteer. A young woman, university student, she comes in every Saturday morning for an hour. She is — I don't know her last name. Her first name is Jessica. She just talks to me for an hour about whatever. School, her boyfriend, her parents. I don't really know why she does it. I asked her once and she said, "I like old people." That's all. I look forward to Saturdays for her. The kindness of a stranger paying attention to me has been — it has been a gift.

I: If you could change one thing about how society handles loneliness?

P: Make people visit. Visit your old people. Visit them when they can still hear you, when they can still tell you their stories. Don't wait until they can't talk anymore. There's a thing in this place, you know, every Sunday the family rooms fill up. And the rest of the week, mostly empty. Make Tuesdays count too. That's what I'd want.

I: Anything I haven't asked about?

P: Just — thank you for sitting with me. This has been the best part of my week. You're a good young man for doing this. Tell whoever runs this study that an old man in Burnaby said thank you.

I: Thank you, Frank.

P: Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll have a little nap.
