Yvetta Fedorova

It is now two years since I lost Richard, the man I lived with and loved for 44 years, and I have to admit, the second year was harder than the first.

At first I was busy navigating a seemingly unending number of legal and financial issues, foreign territory to me. I figured out how to undertake the many household duties that had long been my husband’s, and I learned to ask for or hire help when tasks were more than I could handle.

The first year, my wonderful immediate family (two sons and daughters-in-law, four grandsons, a son-in-law by marriage, and brother and sister-in-law) and half a dozen close friends saw to it that I was included in all manner of activities with people I love, from visiting the Grand Canyon and celebrating holidays to evenings at the theater, concerts, museums and movies.

I also took on some long-neglected but necessary household projects, like replacing ill-fitting windows and doors and repairing or discarding broken furniture.

Things quieted down a lot the second year. People returned to their lives and, I guess, expected that I had learned how to cope on my own. And to a large extent that was true.

I got the car serviced and inspected and, with one exception, remembered to park on the right side of the street for alternate-side parking. I changed ceiling light bulbs (even though a doctor had told me to stay off ladders), kept the sidewalk swept, disposed of the garbage and recycling, pruned the grapevines and periodically cleaned the drains and gutters.

But something was clearly missing. There was an emptiness that may be hard to understand unless you’ve also been through it.

Take last New Year’s Eve. I had no plans, but the day before, a very thoughtful friend invited me to dinner with her husband and another couple, after which we joined two other couples for dessert. Then all nine of us went to the park to watch fireworks; thousands of revelers were whooping and hollering and generally having a great time. Everyone but me.

I was sad, very sad. To me, alone in a crowd, nothing about this new year seemed celebratory.

The same sadness recurred two months later, on Super Bowl Sunday, when I sorely missed the company of people close to me who were elsewhere, cheering the Giants on to an unexpected victory.

I am by nature a happy, optimistic, can-do person, unaccustomed to feeling vulnerable and adrift. It helped somewhat to vent these feelings to close friends and a therapist.

But a book I found in my personal library, “Healthy at 100,” by John Robbins, may well prove to be the most helpful. I’m not sure how I missed perusing this marvelous book when it was published, in 2006, but I’m awfully glad I found it now.

After 200-plus pages of very informed discussion of life-enhancing issues like diet, exercise and mental stimulation, Mr. Robbins devotes a major section to relationships. He notes the importance of others in our lives and takes issue with self-absorption, with the “me” generation that focuses on itself to the neglect of others. Mr. Robbins cites an illustrative study published in 1983 by Larry Scherwitz, then a psychologist at Baylor University, who taped the conversations of nearly 600 men, a third of them with heart disease. Dr. Scherwitz counted how often the men used first-person pronouns — I, me, mine — and found that those who used them most often were most likely to have heart disease and, when followed for several years, most likely to suffer heart attacks.

The psychologist advised: “Listen with regard when others talk. Give your time and energy to others; let others have their way; do things for reasons other than furthering your own needs.”

Reading this reminded me of Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks’ new “Cinderella” point guard, who instead of basking in adulation for his surprising performances repeatedly has attributed success on the court to his team. How very refreshing for a sports hero.

Joining a New Cause

I think it’s time for me to get out of myself, to join a cause I believe in and to work hard toward its goals. I’m not sure yet what that cause might be. My brother and sister-in-law, despite very busy lives, contribute time and energy, as well as money, to Habitat for Humanity and take pride in how their efforts help others.

I suspect, though, that I may need something that connects me more directly to people I care about. In college I was the untitled dorm therapist; perhaps I could again function in a one-on-one advisory capacity for people in need of a sounding board.

In study after study cited by Mr. Robbins, people in loving relationships with spouses or friends were healthier than those lacking this intimacy, even when the latter had healthier living habits.

One such study of 7,000 men and women living in Alameda County, Calif., which was published in 1979 and was led by Lisa F. Berkman, an epidemiologist then at Yale, found that people who were not connected to others were three times as likely to die over the course of nine years as those who had strong social ties. The kind of social ties did not matter. They included family, friends, church and volunteer groups.

Furthermore, to the surprise of Dr. Berkman and her co-author, S. Leonard Syme of the University of California, Berkeley, those with close social ties and unhealthful lifestyles actually lived longer than those with poor social ties but more health-promoting habits. Of course, those who lived healthfully and had strong social ties lived the longest.

In another study, which was called the Beta Blocker Heart Attack Trial and involved 2,300 men who had survived a heart attack, those with strong social connections faced only one-quarter the risk of death of those not socially connected, even when factors like smoking, diet, alcohol, exercise and weight were taken into account. In fact, social connectedness had a greater influence on survival than the heart drug being tested.

Isolating Our Elders

The demonstrated benefits of social involvement raise serious questions about the generational splits in current society. The three-generation household in which I grew up is no longer the norm — in fact, just the opposite.

When people become too old or infirm to live on their own, they typically move or are moved to facilities with other old or infirm individuals, often far from family and friends, depriving them of connections to people who can provide loving support. The resulting loneliness can be a killer, even in the absence of a fatal disease.

Mr. Robbins points out that in traditional societies that lack modern medicine yet are famous for long life expectancies, “the generations are not artificially separated, and people at every stage of life feel a part of things and have something to contribute.”

I can only hope that will be the case during my own last decades.