Make the world a better place: Send Mail to Lonely Elderly People

[Minneapolis Gnome]

Dear Fellow Mail Artists:  

We all like sending mail and we know how great it feels to get it, right?  Real mail from real people (instead of junk mail churning out from machines) brings joy, makes us feel connected to others and brightens our days.

 

Think what a huge impact we could have by including socially isolated elderly or ill people in our regular mail sending.  It's hard to feel alone day after day without visitors, phone calls or the feeling that anyone still cares about you.  Let's make life better for those folks by doing what we already do so well every week - let's send THEM happy mail, too!

If you know of a relative or friend of the family you can send cards to regularly, pick them.  I can tell you from experience with my 100 year old Grandma that it makes a real, positive difference.  

If you don't know of anyone to write to, here is a link to numerous addresses of nursing homes who would welcome letters for their residents.  You can send mail for "any lonely resident" to the activities director and ask them to give it to someone who doesn't get many visitors.  Check this link out for more info: 

https://www.facebook.com/thelonelyelderly/info?tab=page_info

[Minneapolis Gnome]

Thanks Stripygoose and to everyone for joining with me on this thought train.  

[stripygoose]

Your comments are very thoughtful and well expressed M Gnome.

[Minneapolis Gnome]

Email worked for my Grandma for quite awhile.  As she entered her mid 90s she developed a type of memory problem / dementia called “Sundowners”. Before then she socialized with people in independent living, people visited with her easily and happily, she played cards, remembered who people were, knew where she was and where she lived, etc.  Those abilities have withered away now.  After she eats a meal she wonders if she should pay someone for it like at a restaurant, she doesn't know what to do or where to go next so she stays seated at the table.  She's unaware that she has a room down the hall and wonders how she'll get back “home” to a farm she hasn't lived on in at least 70 years.

It's hard for her to hear so she can't always make much out of a phone call except the knowledge that someone thought enough of her to call her, which makes her happy.  People don't visit or socialize with her very much because she can't hear them, doesn't know who they are and has trouble following the conversation due to memory problems.  When we speak it's like a record on skip because she doesn't remember what was said 45 seconds ago.  

She's socially isolated because people don't talk much with her any more.  She knows that she doesn't get many visitors.  She knows that she feels lonely and bored.  She says she "just sits all day and doesn't do anything".

There are so many people, elderly or disabled, who aren't very physically mobile, who can't carry on a conversation, who don't recognize their own children or family because of memory issues and therefore don't have the opportunity we have right here.  We're lucky to have the ability to reach out and to talk with each other over the internet, to form art mail swapping relationships, to have enough functioning memory to be able to write a note, get a stamp and put it in the mail.  

I bet that a lot of us do mail art as a way to socialize with others because we're lonely too, whether because we're older, disabled, shy, socially awkward sometimes, introverts or just want to find and connect with like minded people out in the world.  We're able to do it and it improves our lives.  I think that while we're still lucky enough to have these abilities we should also use them to brighten the lives of those who aren’t able to reciprocate.  

[Valentine Mark Herman]

67 ISN'T old these days.

YOU have to send art to old people.

Old age begins at 68.

Whether or not anyone loves you at 27, 37, 47, 57 or 67 is another matter.

Val (aged 68)

[Valentine Mark Herman]

A great initiative Monsieur Gnome!

In the mid-90's, I worked for a major European IT company and was much involved in the public sector's use and development of the Internet. I remember a meeting before a committee of the European Parliament in Bruxelles where I challenged a French Mayor about his city's 'new and radical' (as he described it) policy towards the elderly in the municipalities' elderly care homes. "We have given all of the old people an email address, and access to a computer. Now they can chat with their children and grandchildren all over the world. They are no longer lonely.  It is marvelllous!". I challenged him: "OK, but what provisions are you making for the old folk to ease their loneliness and have a real conversation with a real person?" (My Mum was in an elederly folks' home at the time, and I knew how much a converstaion meant to her.) The gist of his answer was "Almost none." Then the discussion got heated, so heated in fact that I came close to being ejected from the hearing.