BS: Fewer friends??

Subject: BS: Fewer friends??
From: maire-aine
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 02:35 PM

This study was released a few days ago, and it's received a lot of coverage, although this Detroit Free Press article doesn't require that you register to read it.

They seem to suggest that the younger generation (age 20s to 50s) has fewer friends that the previous generation (60s and above). I thought that my mother had a lot of friends, but I'm beginning to doubt that. She socialized with a lot of people, but they dropped her like a hot potato when she started showing signs of Alzheimers.

As for myself, I am an only child, and I cultivated my solitude. But I think I have more people in my life who I can open up to than she did.

I'd like to know if other 'catters find this true in their lives? Do you plan to make any changes in your life now that you know this? What would you change?

Best wishes,
Maryanne

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 02:45 PM

Not sure what I'm supposed to find true, Maryanne. I'm not convinced that age is a factor. There are other differences between my parents generation and mine... and mine and my sons, even. As society becomes more mobile, friends as well as family end up scattered all over the globe. My Father's friends all grew up in the same town, married home town girls, worked in local factories, hung out at the same bar, hunt and fished together and knew each other most of their lives. I had a circle of friends that lasted through high school, then mostly a different set of friends in college, another set of friends when I went to graduate school in New York and succeeding groups of friends as I moved, right up until the present. Looking at my grown sons, they seem to have a similar pattern. Seems to me that how many friends someone has is more dependent upon how willing someone is to open up, be out-going and be comfortable with a certain level of vulnerability. I don't think that has much to do with generational differences or age.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: GUEST,Wesley S
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 02:47 PM

I'm about to turn 55 next week so I'm between the two age groups you mentioned. But I guess my wife and I are luckier than most. Our problem is finding time for the friends we have.

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 02:48 PM

I have few people I could call "friends" in the sense of true confidants. My wife, my brothers...that's about it. I have, however, many friends who are closer than acquaintances and I run into more and more all the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: LilyFestre
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 02:52 PM

I noticed that almost all my Nana's "friends" became non-existant when she went into a nursing home. She was very alert mentally and could easily visit for hours on end...very few people came. My Mom retired a few years ago and I've noticed that some of the folks she used to socialize with (from work) don't come around anymore either. Out of sight, out of mind? Either way, it's pretty disheartening.
   
I'm in my 30s. I know a lot of people (many great acquaitances) but consider very few to be close friends.

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: tarheel
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 05:22 PM

well annie,they were not TRUE friends of your mother if they left her for that reason!
tar...

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 05:49 PM

"They seem to suggest that the younger generation (age 20s to 50s) has fewer friends that the previous generation (60s and above). I thought that my mother had a lot of friends, but I'm beginning to doubt that. She socialized with a lot of people, but they dropped her like a hot potato when she started showing signs of Alzheimers." Maire-Aine

In their defense we need to recognize that her long time friends were were her peers. When she "started showing signs of Alzheimers', they may have felt vulnerable. It may easily have frightened them.

Not that that response is an insightful, compassionate one. But perhaps understandable.

Something else above struck me: What we label as 'cultivating solitude' or 'considering very few (people) to be friends' may well have some relevance to a mother's experience. The acorn and the tree, you know.

Not that I think that's necessarily bad. I too like my solitude but at age 70 I prize and enjoy my friends more than I ever did when I was young. I can't tell you how many people I have left in the past.

If the day comes that I am 'dropped like a hot potato' I hope to be able to remember that we tend to get back what we gave.

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 08:19 PM

Old Summer Wine

"All lined up in lawn chairs under the trees
Lost in their thoughts and their old memories
They've outlived their friends and their enemies
They're the last of the line, and they're taking their time
But their minds are as clear as old summer wine"

With Alzheimers, that's certainly not true, and it is a cruel disease. But one of the things I've seen repeatedly is people who've" outlived their friends and their enemies."

For two or three years, my wife and I visited a woman in a nursing home, and tried to offer as much support as we could to her husband. My wife worked with the woman many years ago, and we did what we could to lift her (and her husband) up. They never had children and even though they had been very generous to a niece and nephew over the years, the niece and nephew never came to visit them. The couple complained bitterly about being abandoned, and I envisioned the niece and nephew as these snot-nosed, spoiled ingrates. That was the way they were presented. When the woman died, we went to the funeral and there were only five or six people there. The niece had come and when I saw how she was barely able to walk with a cane, I realized how exagerated the criticism had been of her. I suspect that the couple still pictured their niece and nephew in their 40's. The nephew wasn't able to come and it was very difficult for the niece.

When people reach an age when they are housebound or in a nursing home, many of their friends are already gone, and others are in such poor health themselves that they aren't in any position to go visit someone else.

I've watched my Mother over these last few years. She has been in a retirement complex... first in an apartment with my Father until he died 9 years ago, and these last few months in Assisted Living. In the 13 or 14 years she's been there, she's made many friends who have since died. It goes with the territory, I'm afraid. Now, even though she's 99, she has as many friends as she did when she was 29... more, actually. As one friend died, she made another friend. The day she stops making new friends will be the day she dies.

And her mind is as clear as old summer wine.


Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: gnu
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 08:57 PM

Jaerry... sniff (a good sniff).

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: rock chick
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 09:22 PM

My mother is 83; she has very very few friends as she spent the majority of her life bringing up us 8 children. My dad died at 49, my mum was only 47 and had 7 of us still at home. I have helped look after her now for a few years with the help of one sister, the others decided she needed to be put in a home, the majority vote carried it out. I didn't, nor did one other brother, we fought almost a year to get her out and we won. Now my brother who is retired and single cares for her, I help with rest bite every 3 weeks, and take her out as much as possible. I live 80 miles away but distance is no problem. I always say you choose your friends, you can't choose your family, mum always said 'blood is thicker than water' not in this case, the majority of her children don't really want to know.

True friends are the ones that you may not see for a long time but who you can pick up with as if it was yesterday, who are always there when needed, even if just a telephone call. I know I have some very good friends and also some 'true friends'

rc

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 09:24 PM

My few "true friends" (apart from my brothers) are dead. Cigarettes killed both of them, although one had help from Vietnam.

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: Alice
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 09:55 PM

I heard that news a few days ago, too. It made me stop and think how many of my friends stayed in touch. I kept up with communicating to the ones who moved away, but in distance and being busy raising kids, it isn't easy to stay close. I have two close friends locally that I can call on any time. We keep up with each other by phone if we don't see each other in person, almost every day. One is a sculptor, a guy I've known since 1974, and the other is my voice teacher, whom I met about ten years ago.
When my parents were killed in 1979, the cathedral in Helena, Montana, was filled to capacity for their funeral. Hundreds of people were there, and I had no idea who most of them were, but they knew my parents.

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 10:08 PM

A friend of mine was 97 when she died and the last 5 years she no longer recognized her daughter although she talked about her 'daughter, Marie'. I know it was because her mind had harked back - and she didn't recognize the white haired woman who visited her as someone who was that long ago little girl. I got to thinking about it a few years back and wrote this song:

The Mists of Time

I remember I once had a family
And I know that I was happy then
For I can see their bright little faces
But I don't know where. Or when.

       Memories lost in the mists of time
       I don't know much anymore
       The years, the days, the hours all run together
       Memories lost in the mists of time

Yesterday - or was it just this morning?
They gathered 'round my rocking chair
I recall the scent of many candles
But I knew nobody there.

Subject: RE: BS: Fewer friends??
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 25 Jun 06 - 10:10 PM

As I'm fond of saying, "I now am approaching the milestone where I will KNOW more dead people than live ones."

Art Thieme ;-)