“I Saw Myself in Her Loneliness”

It started on a gray Thursday. The kind of day where the sky forgets to wake up, and everything feels like it’s been covered with a thin sheet of dust. I had signed up to volunteer at the local nursing home—a decision my therapist called “a step forward,” but one that felt more like jumping into water without checking the depth.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Maybe peace. Maybe distraction. Maybe some way to give when I had nothing left in me to take.

The halls of Willow Creek smelled like lemon disinfectant and boiled vegetables. The staff smiled kindly, but their eyes were tired. They assigned me to Room 19.

“Evelyn,” the nurse said. “She doesn’t talk much anymore. Doesn’t get many visitors either. Just be with her, if she’ll let you.”

Room 19 was dim, the curtains drawn halfway. Evelyn sat in a worn-out armchair, wrapped in a lavender shawl that looked older than both of us. Her white hair was thin but neatly brushed. She stared out the window like it owed her something.

“Hi, I’m Lena,” I said softly, stepping in.

She didn’t look at me, didn’t blink. Just stared.

I sat in the other chair, not saying more.

That first visit, we said nothing. Just silence. I listened to the faint ticking of her clock, the muffled shuffle of feet in the hallway. I left after an hour.

The next time, I brought a book.

“Do you like poetry?” I asked.

She gave me a glance. That was all. So I read.

Week by week, she opened up. A word here. A sigh there. One day, I mentioned the lake near my childhood home—the place I’d run to when my parents fought.

Her head turned. “You ran too?”

It felt like someone had taken my ribs and rearranged them. I nodded. “I always ran. Even when I stayed.”

She smiled. It was faint, but it lived on her face like a memory finding its way back home.

Evelyn began to speak in fragments. Stories about her childhood, her sister, her first love. But the one she talked about most was her mother.

“She’d slam the cupboard doors when she was angry,” she said one day. “But I’d rather she slammed doors than go silent. The silence was worse. It made me feel invisible.”

I stared at her. “My mother used silence too. Like a knife.”

Evelyn looked at me for a long time. “Funny how pain echoes.”

After that, we talked often. She told me how she left home young, how she married a man she didn’t love because it felt safer than being alone. How she raised a son who no longer called. She didn’t cry when she said it. That kind of sadness had already carved its way into her.

One day, I brought her a scarf. Pale blue. Soft wool.

“My mom had one just like it,” she whispered, her eyes wet.

We sat in silence that day, but not the painful kind. It felt like prayer. Or forgiveness.

I started staying longer. Reading to her. Brushing her hair. Telling her things I hadn’t told anyone in years. About the nights I cried myself to sleep. About how I still woke up flinching when someone raised their voice. About how I’d spent my life trying not to need anyone.

“You needed love,” she said one afternoon. “But when it doesn’t come, you learn to survive without it. And survival can feel a lot like loneliness.”

I squeezed her hand. It was thin and spotted, but strong in a quiet way.

“Maybe we were both just waiting for someone to stay,” I said.

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t let go.

The last time I saw her, she was asleep. Peaceful, the nurse said. Breathing slowly. I sat beside her for hours, holding that pale blue scarf in my lap.

She passed away three days later.

They asked if I wanted to say anything at the memorial. I did.

“She taught me that healing doesn’t always come in big moments,” I said. “Sometimes, it’s in the quietest corners—two lonely souls finding each other and remembering how to feel again.”

Afterward, I walked outside, breathing in the cool air. I felt like I had left something behind in Room 19—but I had also taken something with me.

Love. In its gentlest form.