Volunteer
efforts have popped up across the country to help ease the lingering isolation
of the pandemic among older Americans, creating connections and unexpected
friendships.
By Mariel Padilla June 8, 2020
Sally Love Saunders,
80, was stuck in a retirement home in San Francisco, desperate for someone to teach her
to use Zoom so she could connect with people outside the building.
Nearby, Sarah
Hinkfuss, 32, had grown weary of video calls with friends and family. She
craved the spontaneity of new relationships and unplanned conversations — hard
to come by in a world that is only now beginning to reopen after being
shuttered by a pandemic.
Both women, strangers
at the time, joined the volunteer phone bank of Mon Ami,
which has connected thousands of older adults with younger volunteers across
the country in recent months. Ms. Saunders and Ms. Hinkfuss had their first
phone conversation on April 12.
“I wasn’t sure how
lucid she would be or how much she would understand about what was going on in
the world,” said Ms. Hinkfuss, a vice president at Bain Capital, an investment
firm. “I was sensitive and cautious, but she blasted right through it. She had
so much energy, and there was definitely a part of her life that was so much
more interesting than me.”
Ms. Saunders, a poet
whose retirement home is less than a block from Ms. Hinkfuss’s apartment, said
the younger woman tells her about the outside world — a world she misses and
cannot access.
The two women, both
self-proclaimed extroverts, quickly bonded over the mental and emotional
challenges of social distancing. Without her friends, nature walks and poetry
readings, Ms. Saunders said she felt disconnected, bored and anxious.
“That’s why Sarah is
good,” said Ms. Saunders, a former poetry instructor and certified poetry
therapist. “Because she’s teaching me how to communicate with people in this
dark age.”
Madeline Dangerfield-Cha,
a co-founder of Mon Ami, an app that pairs college students and other young
volunteers with older adults, said the phone bank relied on gig workers before
the coronavirus outbreak. It shifted to a volunteer model in mid-March, just as
the outbreak prompted a surge in demand, she said.
In recent months,
similar programs have sprouted up across the country. Henrico County in
Virginia created an outreach call center to find adults 65 and older, a group
that makes up about 30 percent of its population, according to Sara Morris, the
county’s advocate for the aging.
And in Los Angeles,
Margaret Irwin, the elder director of a neighborhood council, said she compiled
a list of older residents. She and 25 volunteers called 3,000 phone numbers.
“I think speaking to
a stranger is the only antidote to the anxiety and fear that’s coming at this
time,” Ms. Dangerfield-Cha said. “It breaks down the feeling of being in a
bubble and reminds us what else is going on in the world.”
About a quarter of
people over 65 who live independently are considered socially isolated,
according to a 2018 study published in The Journals
of Gerontology. And
43 percent of people over 60 report feeling lonely, according to another study in JAMA Internal Medicine —
and that was before public health officials instructed older people, and
virtually everyone else, to stay home.
All 50 states have
since started to reopen in some way, but the federal
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services urged the nation’s governors last
month to exercise “extreme caution” before
allowing visitors to return to nursing homes and other long-term care
facilities, which have been hit hard by the pandemic.
With no immediate end
to her isolation in view, Ms. Saunders speaks with Ms. Hinkfuss for about 45
minutes each Sunday. They have moved from phone calls to Zoom, but their
conversations still revolve around their families, careers and past adventures.
During one video
call, Ms. Hinkfuss said she showed Ms. Saunders how to use YouTube. The two sat
in silence and watched a Tibetan singing bowl, a type of bell that vibrates and
produces a soothing tone, for the last seven minutes of the call.
Ms. Saunders has
filled three notebooks with poems about the pandemic since a stay-at-home order
was issued for the Bay Area in mid-March.
“My notebooks should
be in the shape of an ear — they listen,” Ms. Saunders said. “My pages listen
to me, and then I can read it back, and it’s like somebody talking to me.”
Ms. Saunders shares
some of her poetry during each call. And when Ms. Hinkfuss introduced her to
her fiancé, Ms. Saunders pulled out a book of her love poems and read from it.
The two don’t often
talk about the pandemic, but Ms. Saunders’s emotions are present in her poetry,
Ms. Hinkfuss said. After she reads them aloud, she will often ask: “Was that
too dark? Was that too depressing? Should I stop?”
“This is the hardest
thing I’ve ever been through,” Ms. Saunders said. “And I’ve been through the
Second World War, 9/11, cancer and divorce. The isolation goes on for so long,
and the sadness of all these people dying. Even one person dying would be too
much.”
The city of Plano,
Texas, started a service in April called Biweekly Senior Care Calls to check on
older residents. Currently, 17 city workers, primarily members of the public
library staff, regularly call more than 100 older adults.
Holly Ryckman, 50, a
librarian, said the first time she called Dell Kaplan, 81, she learned that Ms.
Kaplan used to work for the city. They immediately hit it off.
“The phone calls are
a bright spot in my day,” Ms. Ryckman said. “Each call gives me a sense of
purpose. It’s really tangible.”
Ms. Kaplan, who lives
alone, said the isolation has been sad and unsettling. She often talks to
relatives and friends on the phone and on Zoom, but said she jumped at the
opportunity for more human contact.
“For a while, I felt
I was all by myself, and I was trying to absorb it all — all the people dying,”
Ms. Kaplan said. “The days are very long, and I try to keep busy every minute.
The phone calls break up the day and made me a new friend.”
Bethany Ross, 50,
another Plano librarian, said she had been speaking with Jennifer Wu, 65, on
the phone every other week since the beginning of April.
Ms. Wu said she was
worried when she heard about the virus because she lived alone. When she
learned about the program in an email from the city, she immediately signed up.
“The conversations at
this point are not about Covid-19,” Ms. Ross said. “It’s about ‘how is your
life?’ and ‘what have you been up to?’ Surprisingly, people have been getting
up to stuff and learning new things. I’m amazed at the resiliency.”
Ms. Wu said she had
joined an online photography club, continued to take daily walks in a nearby
park and used a meditation app to relax.
“You need to have
people that you can talk to,” Ms. Wu said.
Nicholas Nicholson
Jr., an associate professor of nursing at Quinnipiac University who has studied
the social isolation of older people, said loneliness is a complex problem that
develops over a long period, so the solution also takes time, dedication and
effort.
“A single phone call
is this beginning of a relationship that can really improve an older adult’s
mental health,” Dr. Nicholson said.
Isolation is
associated with significantly higher rates of heart disease and stroke and a 50 percent increased risk of dementia, according to the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. According to a study in PLOS Medicine,
isolated or lonely older people suffer a mortality rate comparable to those
linked to smoking, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption and physical
inactivity.
“Older adults have
been impacted tenfold by the virus, and it’s not going away,” said Dana
Bradley, the dean of the Erickson School of Aging Studies at the University of
Maryland, Baltimore County. “This group is diverse, but tends to be the most
isolated and forgotten across geography, income and social class issues,
especially if they don’t have family.”
And in a moment when
everyone is struggling with feeling isolated, a phone call can help both
callers find a much-needed connection, Dr. Bradley said.
“Humans like to be
acknowledged for their own humanity,” she said, “regardless of their age.”
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