Dear LPG, 

As we get older, we really need to keep all the friends we can and with that in mind I have a bit of a story to tell…

I have a friend of about 12 years who is approaching retirement.  He has been through a bit of a rough time lately and although he does not live locally, I have always made a point of giving him a call at least every other day since he lost his wife a couple of years ago.

I know that he is not in a happy place.   Being alone has not helped and he is not very good in dealing with all the financial aspects of life that his wife always sorted out.  Life, at the moment, is not working out for him.  He has his own health issues which were not helped when he left work to become a full-time carer and, when you are already in your mid-60s, finding a new job is even more difficult to do in this day and age, so he finds himself with a lot of financial issues and more money going out than coming in.    

Over the years I have tried to be there for him by continuing to telephone regularly and we have spent time video calling each other.  More recently, as he has told me the problems he has faced, I have done my best to help him when it comes to phoning his utility, telephone and rent suppliers so, as you can imagine, our fun filled phone calls have gradually become more practical and they are not so fun filled anymore.  He will tell me his latest problem and then I answer, and there is little time for much fun after that.  He was once quite good with video calling and basic computing in general, but all this seems to have taken its toll.  

We always shared phone calls where we made each other laugh but since covid-19 struck and his situation changed, I have tried to talk with him about more practical things such as encouraging him to get a bit of bereavement counselling, and I also try my best to be there while he phones some of his creditors.  But lately there are days when I call and there is no answer, and recently there have been weeks when he has completely avoided answering my calls.

He has a sister who I call when I get really worried so I know that he is as OK as you can be in that situation, but it is so easy to just get annoyed about it all and give up with trying to call him altogether.  Another thing that often happens is that you start to wonder just what you have done wrong.  

I got his sister to talk him into calling me and we had a serious heart to heart where I asked why he avoids me.  He told me that he is just trying to avoid stress and our calls are sometimes stressful, but when I told him how worried he was making me he promised to answer my calls and we now have one day a week when we talk about the depressing stuff.  I have also encouraged him to take on a free online IT course.  We opted for very Basic IT but there are quite a few to choose from so we now spend some of our video chats helping each other with that as we share the screen.

Things are much better, and I think the course has helped us to have something in common to focus on apart from the real problems.   I have to admit that as basic as the course is, I am learning too, and we are just going through it at our own pace. 

I have written all this down because another friend told me a very similar story about her relationship with one of her other friends who seems to be avoiding her, and I suspect that there are many readers who are either avoiding their friends or being avoided by them and in the financial times we find ourselves in, friendship is the most important thing we can offer each other.

I suppose what I am trying to say is, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to this problem, but if you have a friend who you think is avoiding you, please don’t just give up on them. 

TS, Erith 

TS has found a little online help…

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