Mamika is the alter-ego of Sacha Goldberger’s 91 year old grandmother. The story goes that Sacha realized his grandmother was lonely and dreamed up a collaborative photo project to lift her spirits!

I need to talk to somebody

As you will notice from some of my other blogs about loneliness, I tend to talk about loneliness that can come about more with the younger generation from their frustrations with social media.  Older people of course do use social media as a way to keep in touch with their families and especially their grandchildren.  The older generation tend to keep updated with images of their grandchildren through Facebook, more so than Instagram.  But this doesn’t mean that just because they are older and possibly wiser that they are any less lonely than a person in their thirties.

Older people are fun!  Really good fun and I just love their “I don’t give a crap attitude!”.  They have experienced many things over their lifetime, good and bad and have many, many interesting stories to share.  They can be wild and silly and of course cantankerous at times, but they can also be very lonely.   Lonely to the point where their only interaction on a daily basis is with a caregiver an hour a day or the T.V if they have no place to go or have nobody to come visit with them.

Quite possibly their families live out of state and are busy with raising children of their own, checking in from time to time but get frustrated with Grandma repeating the same story over and over again.  It is hard when we hear it from our family oldies at times and some of us dread the visit with Grandma, due to lack of patience, family disconnect or possibly dysfunction from the past.   But I don’t know my callers previous family dysfunction, unless they share it with me.  So I can detach myself without having those triggers that we can sometimes get with family members that ignite that flame in us, taking their bitter comments with us, back to the past.  The past that at times hurt us.

But at Phone My Friend I love hearing from older people that are lonely and that just want somebody to talk with.  Yes, they may repeat the same story to me, but I love to listen as they need to talk to somebody, as it helps them so much, just by having somebody to talk to that has the time to listen.  I also find their lives fascinating.  Their stories are quite possibly fabricated or exaggerated at times, but nonetheless I love hearing from them and what they have to share with me.

I need to talk to somebody.  How many times have you said that to yourself?  Older people feel like that a lot of the time and just want to talk to somebody that will listen to them.  They can talk to me about what they are watching on T.V and I try to watch the same show they watch, so the next time we talk I can mention a scene or an episode with them that piqued both of our interests.   Downton Abby is an all time favorite with my older callers and I can most definitely relate to that show as it is also one of my favorites.  Getting them to talk about their lifestyle, past or present, lifts their moods and really, really brightens their day!

I think it is wonderful that Sacha Goldberg the photographer took some amazing photos of his Grandmother as seen above, to lift her spirits as she was lonely.   More images of her can be seen here and they are definitely worth peeking at, as they are such good fun and very inspirational!   Bless the older generation as we have so much to learn from them!