Alone again, naturally

 There's no "again" about it.  I'm lonely.  I'm still lonely.  It's certainly not getting any better, and it may be getting worse.

I'm functional, as I frequently tell people when they ask how I am.  (The other common answer is "It's complicated, these days."  Few people [read "zero," so far] take me up on why it's complicated.)  I'm doing tasks.  I'm doing chores.  I'm going for walks.  A lot of walks.  (My cardio-vascular status is possibly better than it has been for some time.)  Maybe I'm doing all of that because when I'm stuck down into a task, I'm not as lonely.  (Except for those times when the task, itself, reminds me that I used to have help with this, but now I'm going to be doing this by myself for the rest of my life.)

(I've also apparently been blackballed from ESS, so that doesn't help.  I'll have to find a new way to volunteer.  Yet one more thing on my endless to do list ...)

I'm being pro-active.  I'm calling friends much more than I have in the past.  I get the feeling that I'm becoming a nuisance.  (Except for those friends who want to tell me their troubles or give me advice.)

I'm going to a new church nearby.  (It's close enough that I can walk there.)  They are a nice, friendly bunch.  A number of them have started to say that we should get together.  Sundays are getting to be a pretty bad time of the week.  Only one of them has.

He took me to breakfast.  A number (at least four) of his friends have recently lost their wives.  We talked about their different (and common) grief reactions.  He seems genuinely interested in the issue, but, at the same time, genuinely puzzled by it.  Well, naturally.  *His* wife is still alive.  He also suggested that I meet with a group of guys who meet weekly for coffee, so now I have attended my first Old Guys Coffee Time.  (I have to be careful with coffee, since it can make me hemorrhage.)

I'm working at being connected to others.  I'm working so hard at it, that it's making me feel even *more* lonely that/because it's not working.  Nobody knows de trubbel I seen, nobody knows de sorrow.  It's depressing.  Two of the guys at the coffee time have lost their wives (one only two days before Gloria, so we at the same point in the grief cycle), but their life experiences are so different from mine that there aren't many points of commonality.  Grief circle does provide some commonality (some people have wondered what good "group counselling" for grief would do), but that's only an hour, only once a week, and (due to CoVID) virtual.  (And it doesn't help that I'm the only guy.)