All it takes

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PARISH NEWS

ACCORDING to the NHS, hundreds of thousands of elderly people across the UK feel isolated and cut off from society. There is a stigma around loneliness, and many people, especially older people and especially men, are too proud to ask for help; but chronic loneliness can lead to serious decline in both mental and physical health.

However a group of widowers at Springfield Cambridge Church in Bishopbriggs, in the Presbytery of Glasgow, have formed a group to support each other and help protect against such isolation. A member of the group, Ian Miller, introduces ‘The Springfield Cambridge Widowers and Coffin Dodgers Club’.

“How do you feel about going out for lunch one day a week?”

“This was the question posed to me in June 2013 by my two fellow basses in the Springfield Cambridge Praise Team.

“The reason for their invitation was that my wife had died the preceding February, and they wanted to do something to support me.

“That was the start of something which has grown over the past four years to the point where we now have 11 members of our church who meet for lunch every Wednesday at various venues around Bishopbriggs and beyond.

“From the outset, we decided that, when a lady member of our church dies, we will allow her husband time to grieve and deal with all the business which is associated with a death. We usually wait for about two months or so before we approach the husband and invite him to join us.

Not every widower takes up our invitation, but the invitation is left open nevertheless.” “The rules are very simple. The cost of the lunch is shared equally among those present. That is the only rule.

“We have a schedule of the dates and places where we will meet each week.

Each member gets a copy of this. If any member knows that he will not be at lunch he lets another member know so that we do not sit waiting for him to arrive.

Any member who does not attend, without letting another member know, gets a telephone call shortly after we finish lunch to make sure that he is all right.

“When we part on a Wednesday, we say to each other, ‘I’ll see you on the Sabbath’ and, on the Sunday, we see each other in the Hall of Fellowship in our church and part with ‘I’ll see you on Wednesday.’

That means that we have two days when we have a positive contact with one another. “We support each other in many ways.

We visit any member who is in hospital and we provide transport for any member who needs transport for a hospital appointment. When a member is ill and housebound we make sure that he is visited and any shopping which he needs is obtained for him. At our weekly meetings there is always lots of banter and laughter and we set the world to rights.

“We even have a name for our group: ‘The Springfield Cambridge Widowers and Co n Dodgers Club.

“All of us have contacts with friends and relatives in other churches and it is quite amazing how many times we have heard ‘I wish our church had a group like yours.’ “I would encourage everyone who is in a church to start up a group like ours where widowers can meet for mutual support.

To start a group, all it takes is for two widowers to decide to meet for lunch one day each week. Everyone who has joined our group has said, sooner or later, ‘This is great.’

“We even have a name for our group: ‘The Springfield Cambridge Widowers and Coffin Dodgers Club.’”

This article appears in the July 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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