Pandemic increases isolation for shut-ins

Friday, Aug. 14, 2020

DRAPER – Diane Mecham sits at a card table, magnifying glass in hand, working for hours each day coloring what she calls her “angels,” – beautiful line drawings of angelic beings. Sometimes, for weeks on end theirs are the only faces that she sees. 

Mecham is one of the many elderly shut-ins in Utah who feel alone and forgotten – especially during this pandemic. 

It wasn’t always this way. Earlier in her life, Mecham had a job and a full and active calendar, but when she broke her back in 2006, everything changed. Pain became her constant companion. More health complications followed. In 2009 she fell and broke her back again and in 2017, she broke both legs. She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and then macular degeneration. In 2017, she had to give up her car and her beloved dog, Mia, when she could no longer care for her.

“I knew then my independence was gone,” she said.

Mecham’s only family is a daughter who works two jobs and from whom she is somewhat estranged. A convert from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mecham said she was disowned when she joined the Catholic Church. For several years she was active in Blessed Sacrament Parish, but 18 years ago she moved to Draper. She attended St. John the Baptist Catholic Church for a short while, but when she found that more traditional services resonated more with her, she began attending St. Jude Maronite Catholic Church. By 2017, Mecham had no friends to call for a ride to Mass, so attendance became a thing of the past.

Now almost 78, Mecham doesn’t lay the blame for her isolation at anyone’s feet, but she wonders how many others there are like her out there – those who don’t have family active in the Church or those who do not have a strong connection with a parish – and how they are managing.

The coronavirus pandemic has made everything worse, Mecham said. A friend who had been bringing her the Eucharist regularly no longer feels safe – for himself and Mecham – in visiting. What other visits, rare that they were, dried up. Her phone is usually silent for days. Mecham is grateful for Salt Lake County Aging Services and a counselor who, she said, calls her every week to check on her and has signed her up for other programs, which have helped her. She does have a small group of friends, some of whom are also shut-ins, but she worries about straining relationships with the more mobile with too many requests for rides.

“You use your friends, but you don’t want to wear your friendships out,” she said.

Like many of her peers, Mecham knows she could pick up the phone and call a nearby parish for help, but she worries about being a bother. It leaves her in a precarious position; she has a medical procedure scheduled, but county services are unable to transport her, so she has no idea how she is going to get there and back. She should have someone with her at home for several hours as she recovers, but she has no one to ask. Instead, as always, her only companions will be her paper angels.

These days, she relies heavily on her relationship with God for which she regularly gives thanks. 

“You either learn to be strong and depend on God, or you’re not going to make it,” she said. Still, Mecham worries about others in her situation, especially in today’s world. She wonders how they will exercise their right to vote if they can’t get registered, or protect their health if they can’t get flu shots.

“We’re drifting apart, and people are forgotten,” she said. 

The only time of year people reach out is at Christmas, when she and others like her get visits and beautiful gifts from youth groups and families. 

“When you get old, no one wants to bother with you, except at Christmas,” she said. “But what about the other 12 months? What about bringing in a Sunday dinner?”

She encourages fellow Catholics to find the lost, just as the Savior did, to reach out and bring them into the fold. They are lost not to sin but to a world in which they are invisible, yet she knows God sees them, she said. 

Deacon Greg Werking, who recently became acquainted with Mecham, is concerned about her and other shut-ins, particularly during the pandemic.

“I’m an airline pilot by profession, and what I would say is, we need to tune our radar so that we’re capturing people like Diane,” he said. “For some reason, our radar is sweeping back and forth, and we’re missing them. So, it’s just an adjustment in our tuning. We need to pay attention when we’re looking out on the healthy, our parishioners and not parishioners – we should be helping everybody.”

“We capture people like Diane and their situation because that’s showing them the love of God,” he said.