The virus is increasing the loneliness of older people at Christmas

Rosa Otero prepares her dinner in solitude for another evening meal.

This pandemic Christmas Eve has turned what should have been a precious moment of spending time with her family into just another part of her daily life as a widow living alone.

Otero, 83, usually travels from her small, tidy apartment in Barcelona across Spain to northwestern Galicia to spend the winter holidays with her family.

But travel restrictions and threats from health authorities that infections are rising have convinced Otero's family to cancel their vacation plans for this year.

“I don’t feel like celebrating anything,” Otero said as she sat down to eat a plate of salmon and potatoes. “I don't like Christmas because it brings back bad memories. My husband died seven years ago in January. Since then I have felt very alone.”

Otero is one of countless older people, mostly poor and hidden in closed houses, who feel even more isolated than usual on the night before Christmas.

Otero misses the socializing of her neighborhood's public senior center, where she and many others often visit to meet with friends, chat or play cards. This island of society has been cut off by the pandemic.

The only link that connects their fragile life to the world is the local primary care clinic. Medical professionals who, in Spain as elsewhere, have taken on the heavy burden of fighting the virus, have done their utmost to maintain home visits for the elderly who lack the means to fully care for themselves.

80-year-old Francisca Cano's lifelong home has become a warehouse for miscellaneous items. Cano knits, cross-stitches, makes paper flowers and builds collages from pieces of wood, plastic and paper she finds on the street.

The pandemic has meant that she can only speak to her two sisters by telephone.

“We missed each other this Christmas break,” Cano said. “As I grew older, I returned to my childhood and crafted like a girl. This is my way of keeping loneliness at bay.”

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Then there are those whose social contacts were already deleted before COVID-19 made socializing a danger.

José Ribes, 84, is used to being alone since his wife left him. He maintained the Spanish tradition of eating shrimp on Christmas Eve. He peeled and ate them lying on the bed, where he eats all his meals and smokes cigarettes, which give his home a constant smell of stale tobacco.

“My life is like my mouth,” Ribes said. “I don't have any of my top teeth while all of my bottom ones are still there. I’ve always been like this: it’s all or nothing.”

Álvaro Puig has also barely noticed the impact of the virus, which has prevented many families from gathering.

Puig, 81, lives in the old butcher shop specializing in horse meat that he ran after inheriting it from his parents. The countertop where he served customers, the scale where he weighed meat, the cash register where he entered bills have long been closed, all intact. The unused walk-in refrigerator has become a miniature living room for his life as a bachelor in the monastery. There he watches TV with his pet rabbit, which he rescued from the street.

“Loneliness is bothering me these days. I often feel depressed,” said Puig. “These holidays don’t make me happy, they make me sad. I hate them. Most of the family died. I'm one of the last ones left. I’m going to spend Christmas alone at home because I don’t have anyone to spend it with.”

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AP writer Joseph Wilson contributed to this report.

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