And the second big factor, I’m going to guess;
Have you listened to an old person talk about their health? I get it’s central to them, important, etc. But man, they just go on and on. Now imagine you are old, and all your friends are old, it must make up a substantial part of your interaction with each one, I would think. I can certainly understand an older person, with their own/spousal health issues, reaching a point where they just can’t listen to any more of it.
My Grandpa died last year, of Alzheimers- a few years earlier, just as it was starting to get serious, I went on holiday to Australia, and stayed a few days with his younger half-sister. Her mother was, by all accounts, a total bitch; my Grandpa was the one who basically brought up this 18-year-younger baby half sister.
She asked me how he was doing, I explained that he was getting dementia, and was starting to have trouble recognising all but very close relatives, but… and I was in the middle of saying that he was stilll pretty active, and wasn’t in care yet when she cut me off and said ‘Oh, well I was going to write to him; I won’t bother now, there’s no point’. I tried telling her that actually, he loved getting letters- to the extent that my aunt would read any recent ones to him daily for months, and he’d get excited about it every time.
She wouldn’t have any of it- he probably wouldn’t instantly realise who she was, ergo, that was it.
She never even sent him a Christmas card again. Wrote a lovely piece for his eulogy about how much he meant to her though…
This phenomenon is not exclusive to old age and the problems and sicknesses associated with it; when I became spinal-cord injured at the age of twenty I experienced the same thing. I realized who my true friends were very quickly. And that turned out to be very few. I think people are mostly selfish when it comes down to it. I think this is the impetus behind much of the abadonment. When a situation becomes difficult or awkward, a person chooses the easiest path; or the path of least resistance. And for a lot of people, that path is the path of abandonment.
During my father’s final illness, he got exactly one visit from a friend, who commented that he was “much diminished.” Not one other visit, or call, or even an f’ing card. Now these were people that he had honestly believed liked him. Some of them came to his funeral, but almost none of them chose to join the family at his house for a post-service gathering.
ETA: My sister and I were diligent in assuring that at least one family member visited him every single day. We also did so at unpredictable hours to be sure he was being treated appropriately.
When my Step-Nan was finally admitted to a home due to her Alzheimer’s, I never visted her because I was told it would have disturbed her more even though we’d got on OK. She’d spent the past few years throwing things (esp shit) at people and saying sometimes insightfully nasty things to them, but I know that at least some people still maintained contact with her (except her own kids - but I don’t really know what was going on there).
With Alzheimer’s it’s difficult because it seems like the person is already gone. And often they’re so old that anyone who would visit them is busy dealing with their own illnesses.
Also, some people just aren’t that good at dealing with death and illness. WTF do you do? If it’s been a mostly social friendship then you’re hardly going to drag your dying friend down to the club/bingo/chess club/whatever. You’ll still miss them being there.
Ridiculous as this sounds, things like Facebook actually do help for that. I’ve seen a friend accounce his brother’s death and turn off comments. That means it’s just there. Everyone’s told. He doesn’t have to keep telling people every time he’s out and they ask how everything’s going or, if they know his brother, how he’s doing. It’s like a local newspaper announcement in the days when everyone read them.
I’m really sorry about the loss of your daughter. I hope you were able to celebrate her birthday as well as mourn her - though I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t, it’d all be so tied together.
For a variation on the theme, I had a pair of friends (a couple) who were totally there for me during my illness (drove me to and from surgery and watched over me afterward, weekly dinner nights – at my place, since I mostly was too sick to travel even short distances – to keep my spirits up, etc.), and we became (what I thought was) very close.
They abandoned me after I got better. Weekly dinner nights kept getting postponed, and no one would respond to my emails asking about possible alternate dates. They no longer called me up to ask if I wanted to see a movie or otherwise hang out… etc. etc. If I wanted to see them I had to initiate, every single time. That got old real fast, though I kept it up a lot longer than I should have because I had come to believe we were close.
My WAG is that they could consider themselves “noble” for taking care of the sick friend, but once I was no longer sick it wasn’t worth the bother to them. No more “I’m an extraordinarily generous human being!” points. It’s not “noble” just to hang out with an ordinary friend, right? :rolleyes: