The Story of the Old and Lonely Man....

by Fripouille | February 26, 2009 at 09:39 am

1258 views | 75 Recommendations | 48 comments

I knew an old man who lived in the same apartment building as me, here in Lyon. He had no money and he had no friends and he had no family,
and he had no food.

He was polite and discreet.

Every night he would go down to the rubbish bins and try to find something to eat in our rubbish. Every night, we could hear him ripping open the plastic bags and opening and closing the rubbish bins and talking to himself.

Every night.....

I used to invite him into my apartment every now and again and give him a little food and try to persuade him to find help with Social Security or something, or find his family and friends. Or something, anything, or anyone.............but he was completely alone in the world.

Then I went away for a couple of years to Bordeaux to launch a small restaurant with a friend.

When I got back to Lyon he had disappeared, and a neighbour told me that no-one was sure where he was, and that he had most certainly left the area. Ok, I hoped all was well with him.

A couple of months later I was coming home from work and there was an ambulance outside the apartment building. A police car too. The shopkeeper from the general store next door was there and I asked him what was going on.

He said “Oh, you remember the old guy who used to eat from the rubbish bins? The landlord had the police enter his apartment a couple of hours ago because he hadn’t paid rent for nine months. They found him dead in his kitchen”.

We later found out that he had been dead, in his kitchen, for around seven months.

And no-one tried to knock on his door when he first went missing. No one thought about why he suddenly disappeared and no-one thought to question why no-one had seen a removal van or people to help him move.. No-one. He just died, alone, poor, and hungry, without anyone in the world knowing, in his kitchen, with people above and below and on either side of him.

(Everyone had noticed, on the other hand, that there had been some very strange and very bad smells in the building from time to time.....)

They say life can be lonely in a big city. True. Death too, it would seem....

0 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

Terri Potratz

at 10:34 on February 26th, 2009

What a sad story - people can become so complacent and distracted with their busy lives. He was very lucky to have known you, I imagine.

Fripouille

at 10:44 on February 26th, 2009

Yes, we live such crazy lives, with so much input, that the expression "out of sight, out of mind" has never rung more true! All many people seem to have the time to think about is what's in front of their eyes. Now.

Concerning me, I did try to help him get things together I suppose, but once, after he didn't go see a doctor because he was quite ill, as I had asked him to, he didn't get his usual glass of Pastis for a month (I told him that would happen if he didn't show me a drug prescription within three days)!! lol! He didn't appreciate it and would call me cruel, but I stuck it out :). It was quite funny actually...

He was a good person.

Rachel Nixon

at 11:17 on February 26th, 2009

Thanks for sharing this sad story with us, Fripouille. Alas, stories of this kind do pop up from time to time, especially in big cities where the elderly often live away from their families - if they have them.

Fripouille

at 11:46 on February 26th, 2009

Yes they do, and it's always sad to read that in the local papers...

Mind you, many old people live alone here. Do you remember the major heatwave here in 2003? 15000 (yes, 15000!!) people died in a few weeks due to it, many of them alone at home or alone in hospitals, because they had no-one to help them in the heat. There were so many dead that they had to stock them in freezer trucks meant for food!!!

This caused a national scandal (most of the country's medical staff were on holiday, that which couldn't happen in most other places in Europe because laws exist to ensure minimum staffing in summer), and there was a lot of guilty debate about the plight of lonely old people.....France still hasn't forgotten it.

Rachel Nixon

at 16:06 on February 26th, 2009

Yes, I do indeed remember the deaths in the heatwave - the scale of it was shocking. Were any laws amended after that to ensure minimum staffing in hospitals etc?

Fripouille

at 16:30 on February 26th, 2009

Hi Rachel,

France is a country where more laws are voted than in almost any other, given its size. It's also a country which is known for, after the votes and the press releases, conveniently forgetting to put the money there to implement them.......(If you need more info on this, please don't hesitate to ask me. In fact, I may even post on it lol!)

Concerning this issue, the next year saw obligatory air conditioning put into old-people's homes, but in a very sporadic manner, and a lot of talk about, but almost no change in, holiday rosters...(But Shhh, don't say anything...)

And now that the crisis is upon us, don't expect miracles anytime soon.....

Hope this helps.

Mikasi

at 16:55 on February 26th, 2009

that they put the heat-stroke dead in refrigerated trucks is sickly ironic.

where was that cold when they were alive and needed it?

Fripouille

at 17:07 on February 26th, 2009

"That cold", as you so well put it, was on the beaches of the South of France, in the form of the state-paid and untouchable medical staff, as well as the relatives of many of those who died.

Excellent question!

Amy Judd

at 11:32 on February 26th, 2009

Heartbreaking - I think everyone is scared of this happening to them.

Fripouille

at 11:49 on February 26th, 2009

Oh I'm sure you're right Amyjudd! Older people in particular, I suppose...

The idea of dying alone, alone in physical and in social terms, is something that we all try not to imagine.....

jazzyzazzy

at 14:09 on February 26th, 2009

So very very sad,I wonder did he have a name! for it seems to me he was just left to die.In this day and age it is abhorant to realise that the elderly are not given their due respects and rights.Awe, it was so kind of you to try and help the old man Fripuille,Its just a shame the others around him lacked your compassion.It is people like you who set a good example ,to make the world a better place.

Fripouille

at 14:35 on February 26th, 2009

Oh, I'm sure others, even in the building, and elsewhere, helped him too, like me, without making a big deal of it....at least I like to think so.

As Terri said, we just get caught up in our own lives and other stuff just slips away...

His name? Jean-Paul.....

anarkissed

at 14:12 on February 26th, 2009

There are people in the world who do face this. They are alone now. It's not really the dying alone that is hard, it's living alone. Many of these people are just too unsocial to be able to be the other half of a relationship. They may lack the skills, or the empathy, or just the manners. Some are too filthy, some too argumentative, others too angry. Some are perfectly lovely people but they need a lot of alone time because the socializing wears them out, and they can't reach out and initiate contact. If you meet these lonely people, that is the time to care. Not after they're dead when it's easy, but now when it takes patience and thoughtfulness. Take them as you find them and search them like a new city to see what they have to offer, not as a project to be made into something you like. Offer only that which you can give freely, and then give it freely.

If you cannot find the energy to do these things, stop feeling guilty and just live. But please don't shun these people now and sigh over them later. We want you to invite us out once in a while, even if it's just a walk round the block. Okay?

(I"m less lonely since someone married me but if I outlive him, I'll be lonely again)

Fripouille

at 14:41 on February 26th, 2009

Hello Anarkissed,

Absolutely right, and my own life makes me know why I wrote that. No-one needs pity, they need a little help. Now.

It doesn't take much, just a coffee, or a smile and a chat, or a couple of euros, or a little food, to let people like him know that we're there.....

I am so glad you are no longer lonely......horrible feeling. Dangerous, even...I knew that once.

sara star

at 15:05 on February 26th, 2009

A very touching story in many ways.

Fripouille

at 15:48 on February 26th, 2009

Hello Sara Star,

It's always sad to read stories like that in the press. It happens quite often. When I heard he'd died, I felt sad for him, of course, but I felt even sadder for us all, and our way of living......

Thanks.......

kuuva

at 15:30 on February 26th, 2009

i have heard of 2 cases from my friends in Germany. i hope this is not how many of us will end up. maybe go knock on your neighbors door just to say high. maybe even get to know them, we may end up depending on them one day.

Fripouille

at 15:53 on February 26th, 2009

Very important that, Kuuva.

Your comment comes as a coincidence, because one of the upstairs neighbours who arrived recently, and who I'd only seen a couple of times, came down earlier this evening to ask if I could lend her my hoover.

It was a real pleasure to be able to do so......It's good to know people, to know you can just ring the bell, and that they can too.......

Iffy (not verified)

at 15:37 on February 26th, 2009

This in particular is a British disease: it started in the UK and has spread to other modern countries. The constipated and cruel social relations; the knowing of the price but not the value of things. The British are cruel people; born killers and maligners.

Fripouille

at 15:54 on February 26th, 2009

Thank you for commenting Iffy.

Babel-Fish

at 18:11 on February 26th, 2009

Well iffy,

No this is not just a British problem its a problem all over the world and even worst in the third world. I really do not appreciate the British hate as I am British and I do know we have people in my country that are just as you say. But we also have many, many more that care about their fellow man as I do. The problem did not start in Britain thought it can be found there.

So be a decent fellow and do not pigeon hole a whole race of people with your apparent hatred as its just not so.

mudricky

at 15:49 on February 26th, 2009

Very sad, but sadly very true way of life for some people.

Fripouille

at 15:56 on February 26th, 2009

Isn't it just.....

I suppose it's inevitable in some ways, there are winners and losers in life. But knowing that doesn't make it much easier to deal with....

mudricky

at 15:59 on February 26th, 2009

I'm the kind of person, if I was aware of the bloke would notice he wasn't around I'd look into it.

If only someone did that for him.

sara star

at 18:57 on February 27th, 2009

Apparently someone did, only too late.

Fripouille

at 16:14 on February 26th, 2009

Oh, me too. If I'd been there when it happened, when he disappeared from one day to the next, I would certainly have gone up there to check on him because it would have seemed weird.

Then again, it's hard to blame people. My life has led me too experience quite a few things, but for others that kind of stuff is surely a little difficult to handle. I mean talking to people who eat from the rubbish bin just isn't what some people do.....Social conditioning plays a role here I would imagine..

caj1

at 16:40 on February 26th, 2009

Great to see so many comments on this story here...it gives me and others (I hope) hope that society can be kind. Your story sounds like a Truffaut movie...I just read about the re-release on DVD of "The Wild Child." Doctors in nineteenth century France did not solve what ailed the "wild child" but it was probably some form of autism. I would like to see Truffaut's movie again, and I recommend others re-visit it. Truffaut was such an artist and a survivor of childhood suffering himself.

Fripouille

at 17:05 on February 26th, 2009

That was, and still is, a great film, made by a genius.

As you say, there's so much sensitive expression in his work, much of it drawn from who he was.........

Thanks for your comment!

Paschen

at 16:37 on February 26th, 2009

Hum, I hear of similar event a couple of times coming from Europe, North America and even Tokyo.

Yet never did I hear such a story coming from Algeria, Niger, Hungary or Vietnam... People may be poor there but they do care still for one another. Consumerism may be nice as a goal however what does it leave of the soul.

Fripouille

at 17:02 on February 26th, 2009

Hi Paschen,

I don't think it's that simple to be honest. It's difficult for me to talk about this in a cultural-politics manner, and I don't think that individual selfishness, poverty, loneliness and the ill-treatment of older people is a uniquely western speciality. Far from it. Moreover, several of the countries you cite have severe human rights and crime problems.

It does not seem to me that life in those countries is any more to be admired than it is here, and I certainly wouldn't like to live in any of them in the conditions that their peoples do..Would you?

I am not going to have a catholic moment about my culture as compared to others, but, that said, there's certainly lots of room for improvement here, for sure...

Thanks for commenting!