Flash forward to present day: I’m now 76, and while it’s true that I’m not entirely without a support network, it’s turned out to be a pretty meager one. I have lunch once a month with an old friend from my photography days and about once a year with former Oregon University System colleagues. I made new friends when I spent three years as a part-time faculty member here recently (2019-2022), but now that that position has ended, I now rarely see those folks. I have kept in contact with Katrina (mentioned previously in my writings here; she is the person named in my Advance Directive), but she has her own very busy life and we communicate primarily, and fairly infrequently, by text. I have a Zoom session with an old high-school friend from Wisconsin once every couple months or so. And finally, I admit I had high hopes for real and sustained human connection when I was in a relationship for about three years, but that ended last year and left me alone and grieving.
Given that the pandemic is largely in our rearview mirror, I have once again started spending time here at my neighborhood Starbucks. It’s not really community, per se, but as I sit here writing this, there are the sounds of work, conversation and occasional laughter. There are college students at the next table studying for, what I assume, their final exams. It’s true that I don’t actually meet people here, but it provides some sense of comfort: probably for the same reason that, when at home, I keep the TV or radio on most of the time; the NPR hosts and the news anchors at MSNBC keep me company. Fortunately, right now I have part-time work, in a tech-support role, at the college, that physically puts me in the classroom and in contact with instructors and students, for a few hours a week. That tends to keep me going.
