With such a large flow of knowledge and information being thrown around, it is not surprising, even though seemingly outlandish that our media outlets decide to ignore big stories that impact our communities at the core.   

Unsurprisingly I am referring to the case of the Zabbar gentleman. 

Ronnie was left to his own devices.  In the last moments and beyond he was only attended to by his dog that tried so hard to save her master but at a certain stage had no other option but to start nibbling through his corpse to survive.  This story could easily make it to Hollywood, an ideal story-board that shows the way our communities seem to be regressing in some instances.  

The strange and unusual thing about all of this is that media consumers usually thrive on gruesome and ghastly stories like these but somehow this account died on us all.  Possibly apart from this Column, Arena on One TV (anchored by Ramona Attard) and a couple of news features that reported this matter right after it had happened, this story washed the topsoil away.  This mind-boggling somber narrative appears to have been quickly stacked in our collective storage space.  It seems that for some reason or other we wanted to forget about this man as quickly as possible. 

Let’s talk about Ronnie for a moment.

Ronnie lived in an alley.  People who lived close by were unashamed to say on the news that he was supportive of them whenever they needed him.  He seems to have served people with his chatter, jokes, generosity and running chores for them.  He loved his dog with a passion, a lifetime companion indeed.  In other words, Ronnie was a regular 71 year old man, keen to be helpful and obliging.  He was described by one and all as a good man, reliable and upright.  Yet he still departed all alone and it was only by coincidence that ‘we’ realized he was dead, some 2 months after he passed away.

But Ronnie’s dramatic end to his life is symptomatic of a segment of the population that is increasing in number.  These ‘alone people’ are augmenting in droves.  Even if we are spending so much money in social services we don’t seem to be keeping up with this flow of loneliness that is sweeping our society.  It could be globalisation or maybe a shift in our lifestyles.  It may well be that people are moving out of the neighborhood where they have been brought and it makes it increasingly difficult to connect with the ‘new’ others.  Whatever the cause, people are being neglected by the wayside.

Ronnie died silently, taken away from his community and family that was hardly if at all interested in him, but definitely engrossed in its own needs.  Ronnie was most probably a typical senior citizen who wanted to get on with his life, enjoy his retirement, spend time with his dog, take pleasure in the occasional conversation and mind his business but without losing sight of those around him.

At the other end we have a Country that even though phased with this tragedy of forgetting one of its own it decides to slip into a state of amnesia.  It chooses to sweep under the carpet the dire circumstances that Ronnie found himself in.  It is a society that is spiraling downwards in terms of sensitivities, finding it increasingly complicated to make a distinction between the real and counterfeit.  Some even had the nerve to speak about Ronnie as if this is a situation that ‘had to happen’ as if it was written in the book of destiny!

Totally wrong reasoning! 

This shouldn’t have come about at all and I would go a step further and say that it could have been prevented.  We cannot simply roll over to the next story.  Our politicians and policy makers need to really think things through here and ask very important and fundamental questions, namely; ‘What makes our communities function?’ and ‘Who really makes part of our communities?’

I have always claimed that we can only put our minds at rest when such incidents have the potential to occur but the support systems manage to prevent this from actually happening.  The argument that we couldn’t do anything about Ronnie’s situation is a fable and not something I will concede. 

There is so much loneliness out there.  

We are at a point where we need to stop this hemorrhage of people feeling that they do not experience a sense of belonging and we need to do so as quickly as possible. 

I believe that this whole situation calls for action.  With such incidents of people like Ronnie, an alarming suicide rate, our institutions packed to the brim with children at one end and the elderly at the other, with agencies like Caritas repeatedly flagging a society that is not functioning - it is probably high time to react. 

We need to engage all social partners, ranging from those responsible for the training of professionals, namely the Faculty for Social Wellbeing to those in charge of policy development that is to say the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity, from those responsible for the provision of services, to be exact, the Foundation for Social Welfare Services to NGOs and Voluntary Organizations. 

It is ill-fated that we measure our social cohesion success rate on an index founded on fund-raising activity splashed out on our TV screens every other week.  This is a populace that seems to be pleased with itself simply because we have a strong and highly participative NGO sector.   Ronnie’s situation brings everything into perspective and merely feeling good about what we are doing is not good enough. 

Interesting enough that at the time when Ronnie and his dog were forgotten by the World, we were all busy running around collecting money for l-Istrina and organizing Christmas meals for the ‘lonely’, we were hearing one message after another that people should not be left alone and we should take good care of each other.   

But we know that Ronnie’s plight whilst unique in a certain way is not matchless. 

People are left to metaphorically rot by their family and ’friends’ in old people’s homes.  Children are deserted and we ditch ‘our’ kids in residential services.  People, old and young are flagging their desperation and loneliness and left to their own.  We have persons with disability who are isolated and left with no friends.  People with mental health problems forgotten in our hospitals.   I even see so many students at University with their greyly moments, dumping themselves into a corner before the next lecture starts, all because they are alone. 

Sadly Ronnie is not one of a kind. 

It seems that we need to find new ways to connect and to come together, to engage in each other’s lives and to become interested enough to ensure that Ronnie’s story will not be repeated.