Loneliness and Aging

Loneliness often accompanies aging for many people. Growing older has felt to me like a rehearsal in small abandonments.

A good friend moves away. A neighbor dies.

The work that once gave me purpose is no longer mine to do.

Even my body has left a bit—my memory slips and my strength falters, leaving me wavering.

Each of these losses unsettles me, not only for what they take, but for what they whisper. They remind me of the larger abandonment that waits at the end.

The ultimate loneliness

There is an existential fear that we rarely discuss. We may commiserate with our friends about rising milk prices or an empty nest, but we often do not admit our deepest fears, even to ourselves.

I woke up this morning thinking about loneliness and abandonment at death. Not a usual awakening thought, but relevant, given the number of funerals I have gone to recently.

What I don’t often admit—if at all—is the fear that loneliness doesn’t stop at the graveside.

Will it reach beyond death? Will I be remembered, or will I fade into silence once the rituals are over?

Will the love that has held me in life stretch across that unseen distance?

For me, this is a harder fear to name than the act of dying itself.

Ways we disguise loneliness

I’ve spent much of my life disguising it. I keep busy, surround myself with busyness, or polish up the words I’m fine.

I listen to YouTube in the evening, exploring ways I can fill my (limited) life.

I’ve been faithful about writing blog posts and meeting responsibilities, but sometimes, beneath it all, the question remains—who will truly walk with me to the end… and beyond?

The roots go deeper

When I look back, I see how abandonment runs deeper than my own story.

My father left for several years before I was born when he went off as a soldier during World War II.
My mother carried both the weight of responsibility and the ache of uncertainty.
She herself knew abandonment when her mother died young. And before she was married she ran a boarding home for unwed mothers who relinquished their children for adoption, because at the time our culture had abandoned them.
My grandfather lost his wife too soon and assuaged his sorrow in “homemade brew.”

These threads in my generational history that include adoption and alcoholism, war and the years of the depression are not uncommon experiences of abandonment.

The list goes on. And I find myself wondering if some of my own loneliness is inherited. Maybe these fears are not just mine. Maybe they are the griefs of generations, passed down quietly, never spoken of, but never gone.

Hiding in plain sight

What’s strange is how rarely I’ve named these fears as I’ve aged. I’ve carried the weight but not recognized it for what it was. I’ve called it fatigue or distraction. I’ve hidden it in busyness, determined to stay active so I don’t see the loneliness underneath. I have difficulty even identifying my experiences of abandonment.

And of course, I was taught to prize independence, to keep my troubles to myself, to never be a burden. Loneliness doesn’t fit that script. Neither does the fear of abandonment.

Aging as a kind of abandonment

Aging itself has become a kind of abandonment. My body, once dependable, betrays me. Memory slips, strength drains away, balance grows uncertain. Each change feels like a quiet betrayal.

The roles that once gave me place and identity are gone. My children, who once needed me for everything, now manage well without me. Friends disappear one by one, until there are fewer left to share the stories that made me who I am.

Even my children’s concern for me sometimes feels like a gentle dismissal—I’m cared for, yes, but no longer at the center of their lives.

The fear around death

All of these smaller abandonments gather around the one I least want to face: death. For me, the fear has never been so much about the mechanics of dying as about what surrounds it.

Will I die alone? Will I die in pain? Will anxiety become unmanageable? Will I be forgotten once the rituals are finished? Will I slip out of memory as if I had never been here at all?

This is the type of loneliness I rarely put into words. A loneliness I hesitate to name. A loneliness not just of life’s last days, but a loneliness that stretches into eternity.

Please don’t misunderstand. I don’t feel this type of lonliness on a day to day basis. But I wanted to look at it as a universal experience, which I believe it is. And it goes by many different names… alcoholism, overwork, obesity, grief…

A wider belonging

And yet, I also wonder if loneliness is truly the last word. Even in my darkest moments, there are hints of presence if I pay attention.

“The silence that frightens me is also the silence that holds me.”

A bird at the feeder. The remembered voice of someone I loved. The warmth of a hand I held so often that I can still feel it in mine. Perhaps death is not abandonment at all, but a passage into a wider belonging.

Different traditions use different names—God, Spirit, Mystery, Love, Jesus. Others speak of presence in memory or in the natural world that gathers us back into itself. In hugging a tree or planting a garden. Or meeting loved ones.

I don’t know the final truth. But I suspect that loneliness and belonging are never as far apart as I once thought. The absence that feels unbearable may be the very space where the Mystery of Presence is made known.

What matters most

I cannot erase my fears, and I won’t pretend to. But I can name them now. And in naming them, I sense they lose some of their power.

I can see how abandonment has shaped not just me, but those before me. And I can confess how deeply I long to be remembered, to be loved to the end, and to belong.

These longings are not weaknesses; they are signs of what matters.

So I leave the question open—for myself and for you:

When have you felt most alone, and what carried you through? Could those same companions—memory, faith, friendship, love—walk with us to the end, and perhaps even beyond?