A fragile web

Have you ever been in a room full of people you knew, but didn’t really know? Ever felt as if you could just disappear and no one would really notice? I sat in a waiting room last week (at the CCMA if you must know) and felt so utterly alone. There were people all around me, and we were casually chatting, but I did not belong, and I was not loved there. The emptiness overwhelmed me, and all I wanted was to leave and be with people who mattered to me.

I heard something very interesting the other day. Apparently, being lonely has the same effect on your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I think it struck me so much because I have realized more and more lately that people, despite being über-connected, are in fact lonelier and unhappier than any other generation. According to statistics, the most emotionally isolated people are those with hundreds of Snapchat and Instagram friends. The people reportedly feeling the most disconnected in the world are the 19 to 29 year olds. I am not sure if people perceive themselves as lonely because they compare themselves to fake lives on social media, or because they crave authentic connection but are not actually willing to have face-to-face interactions and make the sacrifices that being in a relationship entails. Real relationships are messy and costly.

We need community, in fact, I believe we were created for it. There are so many sayings about community, working together, and striving together, like “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” “A single leaf working alone provides no shade.” These sayings are all about success and achieving things, but community is so much a part of us that it is almost like breathing; we don’t really notice the need for it unless we suddenly don’t have it.

I can say that without a doubt, our best moments at work are during staff lunches when we all sit down and talk about totally mundane things or tease each other. We seldom touch on deep, meaningful subjects, but when they come up, there is a safe space and a prepared foundation where one can talk about things that matter. I also see it when friends visit patients and giggle while playing bridge, or in the quiet moments when spouses just sit together. There is a need that is filled in community that cannot be filled by things, knowledge, and ideas.

We have a young 32-year-old woman with us who is very ill. She has no children and no partner. She is very sick, but her pain is managed. She has no job and no purpose, so many would say, no reason to be alive. Maybe if you compare your own busy life, filled with errands to run, people depending on you, places to be, and meetings to have, her life might seem pointless. She has stage-four triple-negative cancer and cannot get better. She has no family members who depend on her and no desperate need to write a book or tick off a bucket list. She is basically waiting to die. To many people, it might make sense that her life serves no purpose and it is a better idea for her to just die. I don’t agree. Neither does she, actually. I see the friends visiting her, sharing responsibility, making her life better, and giving themselves an opportunity to focus on the essence of a person, not just their existence. She is not lonely, and because of her, other people are not lonely.

I think we need to change how we view?people in general, but especially during end-of-life, or for people living with debilitating diseases or disabilities. ?It seems that the only people who ever mention euthanasia are those who are not planning on doing the dying themselves. It is quite frightening how many times a week we get contacted by family members regarding a loved one and after some conversation, we realise that their goal is that we end the life of that person. We always say the same thing: this is not legal in South Africa, we do not do it and we do not want to do it. We certainly don’t believe in prolonging suffering or life unnecessarily, but apart from the fact that it is illegal, we notice how individuals enduring what we perceive as suffering are granted a specific grace, like an allotted tender of benevolence that surrounds them, making a life we may perceive to be unbearable anything but.

I don’t understand it, but I experience it. There is a sense of community when it comes to these cases: healing around the bed, not of the patient or the patient’s disease, but of relationships. There are people who are forced to come and sit still at someone’s bedside and confront their own fears, reassess their own immortality, and find the courage to look into their own fragile existence. That quiet person, with a bit of drool who forgot who you are, does have a purpose. It is not the same as yours and mine, who are reading this blog and planning dinner and paying insurance, etc., but in that quiet, they are forcing us to look at life differently; they are providing employment; they are a presence in people’s lives for a myriad of reasons. They remind us, however uncomfortably, that there is more to being human than being productive or strong or “useful”.

A while ago, a family booked their 25-year-old son into the Recovery Lodge. He had a cruel case of cerebral palsy and was the closest I have ever seen to locked-in syndrome. He was beautiful, but terribly frustrated and kept screaming. We were not the place for him, and we soon realised his family wanted us to euthanise him. He was ill, but he still had years left in him with his strong organs. There was absolutely no reason for anyone to think he was going to die soon. His family was exhausted and there was such awful discord. His?parents were divorced, and the siblings were not speaking to each other. It was messy. My heart broke for them as I could see how the existence of this young man had torn the family apart for years. I can only imagine how hard everything must be for a family to get to this point at which?you would rather end someone’s life than see a way forward living with his suffering. I am grateful that I do not have a family member who has ever made me feel so desperate that I would have thought that ending their life would make mine better. I am also grateful that I have never come across anyone who has begged for their life to end. I mention this young man because it has been years, and I often wonder what happened to him. Did his family find healing around him, or was it easier to just move him somewhere where he could not upset and divide them further?

We have become so either-or and so quick to give up marriages and relationships, to cancel people, to be pro-abortion or anti-woke that I think we have lost some of our humanity. Life is far more valuable and fragile, far more simple and incredibly complex than we would like.

Each life still matters and is still worth living, no matter how short or long it may be and no matter how much value it seems to add to society at large. ?Each of us forms part of this wonderful, colourful quilt we are crafting together, carrying each other’s fragile connections.

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