Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say,
“Hello in there, hello” …………….
Social loneliness was killing people before social isolating was mandated. It can only be getting worse during COVID-19 and the related consequences such as depression. John Prine was singing about loneliness decades ago.
When Marc Freedman, founder of Encore.org, realized John Prine was ill with the virus, he wrote a nice article for Newsweek. From the article, I am sharing this story.
“For all of the song’s reminders of how this country writes off its older population, I find a source of hope in the circumstances of the tune’s birth. Prine was just 24 years old when he wrote it.
“I’ve always had an affinity for old people,” he said in 2016. “I used to help a buddy with his newspaper route, and I delivered to a Baptist old people’s home where we’d have to go room-to-room. And some of the patients would kind of pretend that you were a grandchild or nephew that had come to visit, instead of the guy delivering papers. That always stuck in my head.”
“Say hello in there. Hello.”
