Nigel

I first met Nigel at a coffee morning at church, in the group playing board games.  Nigel was a big, plump, shy man in his fifties, who suffered from severe osteoarthritis and walked with a frame.  As well as Tri-ominos and Scrabble, he loved drawing, and cake.

After a few weeks of board games, Nigel handed me a note.  In it, he explained that he felt sexually attracted to me, missed kissing and cuddling his girlfriend, who had died the previous year, and felt that he needed sex very badly, but he would never force himself on me, and that I was welcome to come to his flat.  He added that he suffered from schizophrenia, but took his tablets regularly.

I wrote a reply, explaining as gently as I could that I didn’t feel sexually attracted to him and didn’t really want to visit his flat.  The offer seemed too reminiscent of ‘Have Some Madeira, M’Dear’ (although if Nigel had been the seducer, he would definitely have been offering cake rather than wine). I emphasised that I was willing to be friends. 

Nigel wrote back, and, as we realised that we were both better at expressing our feelings in writing than in person, we became pen-friends.  Nigel had been in and out of hospital since childhood, had missed a lot of schooling because of this, enjoyed swimming, and had studied electronics at St Loyes Foundation, a college for disabled people which is now part of the charity Step One.  He didn’t get on with his family, and said that nobody, until he met his girlfriend, had ever cuddled him. 

Sometimes we clashed.  Nigel wanted to bombard me with presents which I hadn’t asked for, and which he couldn’t afford.  After I banned him from giving me presents, he settled for sending his drawings.  When I had several large boxes of pictures and nowhere to put them, I hardened my heart and sent most of them back.  I kept a study of a tree, a colourful geometric design, and seven portraits of Jesus, all different, because nobody knows what Jesus looks like, and he looked different in Nigel’s head every time he drew him.

He texted constantly.  He understood that I couldn’t reply while working, but if he texted while I was walking home and I didn’t reply instantly (probably because I was thinking about what he had said and writing a reply), he pressed re-send repeatedly until I answered.  Often he texted several times while I was eating dinner.

If this sounds like an Aesop about the risks of befriending damaged people, I would like to point out two things. 

Firstly, I was at least as dysfunctional as Nigel.  Secondly, he never harmed me.  Thirdly, I am glad that I had the opportunity to become his friend.

The media produce many articles about protecting yourself from lonely, vulnerable people who may become stalkers.  There are also articles about the disastrous impact of loneliness on people’s health.  But there is little advice on how to help lonely people.

Once, I talked to a counsellor about how lonely I felt living in shared houses alongside housemates who never became close friends.  She remembered that I had Asperger’s syndrome (which, to her, implied ‘mentally handicapped’), and suggested that I could move into a sheltered flat where there was a warden to help me with cooking and shopping.  I pointed out that I had been cooking and shopping for myself since I was at university.  What I, like Nigel, wanted, was someone to love. 

She suggested going to a day centre where I could do activities.  This didn’t seem relevant, since I already went to the coffee mornings, not to mention working in a care home where I was around colleagues and patients all day.

Groups are all very well as a way of enabling people to meet.  However, for introverts, they do not provide close intimacy, only an opportunity to do things alongside other people (like drawing) or to interact at a superficial level (like playing Tri-ominos).

As Nigel was desperate for love, I suggested that he might try internet dating.  Nigel said there was no point, as his dead girlfriend had been his only love.  I tried it myself, and soon met a man who was many of the things Nigel wasn’t (intelligent, interesting, and considerate), and also some of the things Nigel was (such as lonely, sexually frustrated, and overweight).   
When I met my online boyfriend in person and started to get to know him better, possibly part of the reason I cared so much about him was that I didn’t want him to end up like Nigel.  But there were so many other reasons for us to become friends, starting with having a similar sense of humour and taste in books, and so many reasons for us to fall in love once we met, that this was only a minor factor.  Perhaps every interaction we have with one human being shapes our characters, which shapes the way we interact with everyone else.

Shortly before all this, Nigel had a heart attack and was rushed to hospital.  When I arrived, he was in intensive care, covered in life-support equipment, and so I read to him from a newspaper until he fell asleep.  The next day, he was asleep when I arrived, so I didn’t disturb him.  While on the bus to the hospital for my third visit, I received a text message saying that Nigel was dead.

I think Nigel would have been surprised how many people came to his funeral.  His family refused, but everyone from the coffee mornings was there.  A church elder who had been to visit Nigel a few days before he died said he hoped he had been able to reassure Nigel that Jesus at least did not reject him.  I remembered Nigel saying that, while he didn’t want to be ‘100% Christian’ (which he assumed meant pretending his anger and his sexuality did not exist), he had Jesus in his heart.

I was quite sure that Nigel was in Heaven.  Yet Heaven is not enough.  We are here, not to believe that people will experience God’s love when they die, but to love each other, as much as possible, right now.  As Bob Franke wrote (in a song I know best from David Wilcox), ‘Let’s be kind to each other, not “forever”, but for real.’