That's because the loneliness I see these days is the product of ageing. Compounding that is age-related hearing loss, which may be more isolating than deafness in younger people because those younger people form their own communities and learn alternative means of communication.

It's hard work talking with deaf old people, and the humour that comes with you commenting on the weather and the old codger telling you his wife died seven years ago doesn't last long.

I'm only now becoming aware of how hard it can be talking with deaf old people because only now do I find myself talking with deaf old people. When I was younger, deaf old people lived in another world.

Retirement is just one of the reasons I'm in that other world now.

Several years ago I did a free hearing test when a hearing-test bus visited my camping ground in Queensland, and after several minutes of pushing a button whenever I heard a tone I was very pleased with myself. When the testers told me I had hearing loss I protested that I'd heard every tone! It's not a problem now but it may be later.

The wider loneliness I see is caused by the fact that many people who retire also retire socially. Many become very socially active, I know, but many don't.

Then there are those who have had little life beyond work before they retired and find in retirement that friendships are not created by ticking a box. They face the same problem as many of those who retire and move, who believe that by moving they're embarking on a new and exciting life. Many of these people come to regret the move.

The problem, as first explained to me by an old boss who moved north when he retired, is that friendship requires history, that friends without shared history are merely acquaintances. And while my old boss had many acquaintances in his new town, he was lonely.

It seems to me that retired people who move away believe that just as they made friends in the area of their old home they'll make friends in the area of their new home, when the fact is that their old-home friendships were developed over many years, perhaps making just one new friend every few years.

Ah, they think, their old friends will visit, and most will. Just once, to satisfy their curiosity.

The result is often sad. Fifteen years ago an outgoing couple I know sold up in Newcastle and joined the grey migration to Port Macquarie, but three years later they were back. What happened? We couldn't make any friends, the retired business manager told me.

They weren't able to buy back into their suburb so they bought a new mini mansion in a sunburnt, treeless estate on the city's outskirts, where, I suspect, they made no more friends than they had in Port Macquarie.

Of course it's not just old people who can be lonely. When my wife was at home looking after our pre-school children she would have little exchange of significance with the wider world, and she was hungry for an account of my working day. To me it was just a day at work, and one I wasn't too keen to relive, while to her it was an open window.

Fortunately this lonely stretch was brief, at least in terms of a lifetime.

We've all known, too, young people who are lonely because of the inhibiting impact of a disability or shyness, and this is particularly sad. It's perverse that those who especially need a friend can be too earnest to form a friendship readily. Just as it is much easier to get a job when you have a job, it is much easier to make a friend when you have a friend.

But the loneliness I have come to recognise in recent years is related to age and ageing. Part of ageing is illness or infirmity, and, cruelly, illness is isolating, especially terminal illness.

A good friend of mine died not so long ago in Calvary Mater Mercy Hospice, and after a lifetime in business he had more good friends than could fit in the church at his funeral. But very, very few of those good friends had visited him in the hospice. I know that because he told me, and I could see that he was disappointed. Yes, I know dying is difficult for those who are not. Yet.

Another old friend who died recently, in his mid 90s, used to tell me that the secret to staying engaged was to mix with younger people, and he'd go to a club regularly for a couple of beers with that in mind, even when it was an effort.

Most of his younger friends died before he did, so that his last year or two in a nursing home was lonely. Unfortunately living longer is a common cause of loneliness.

jeffcorb@gmail.com

letters@theherald.com.au

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