We All Need A Buddy Sometime When The Chips Are Down, There Should Be A Place We Can Go For Support

These are bleak days for the human spirit, and worse if you’re feeble or lonely or suffering from vague aches, inside or out.

This week, one woman I know learned she has breast cancer. Another, struck by a hit-and-run driver, broke both legs. A third is holed up in her big house, coming out of depression, slowly and alone.

The first woman has a partner. The others don’t.

Yet all three could benefit right now from a full-time buddy or, better, a houseful of buddies.

Buddy Lodge, such a imaginary place might be called. In a compassionate society, every neighborhood would have one.

You check in for short stays when you need company and cheer, but not artificial they-pay-me-to-be-perky cheer. The spirit at the Buddy Lodge will be as vigorous as in any busy household.

That’s because the lodge isn’t staffed in the classic sense. The people who call it home work elsewhere for pay but enjoy group living and the particular pleasures of buddyhood.

You, the needy one, won’t find psychotherapy or skilled nursing care here. But you can expect banter, jokes, companions for coffee and TV, children to tickle, and tales of other people’s lives to distract you from your own.

Who can check in? Anyone emerging from divorce, recovering from trauma, undergoing challenging medical procedures like chemotherapy - or simply untangling themselves from the blues.

Doesn’t everyone have family or friends to help them in crises?

Nope.

Families may be distant - or too smothering. And friends are often nonexistent, or simply unable to provide daily help.

Besides, having a friend is different than having a buddy.

Friendship is an exchange: Sometimes you’re needy, sometimes your friend is. Whoever is stronger breaths life and energy into the other.

Buddies don’t ask anything of you. They don’t know your darkest secrets and don’t need to. They accept you as you are, and offer you what they can.

Bill Clinton picked the best name when he dubbed his new puppy Buddy, articulating the longing in all of us for such a pal.

Unlike a pet, a human buddy can burn out. These days, for example, people with AIDS get help from organized teams of buddies, as many as 20 people. That reduces the burden on any one buddy’s shoulders.

That’s the beauty of the Buddy Lodge.

Of course, no insurance plan will cover the Buddy Lodge’s kind of care, even though science has demonstrated that companionship speeds recovery.

So the Buddy Lodge must be free. Nothing will be asked of its short-term residents except thoughtfulness and decency, and maybe a hand with the dishes.

Andrew Solomon, describing his experience with depression in a recent New Yorker, wrote: “The knowledge that I was loved was not in itself a cure but, without it, … I would have found a place to lie down in the woods and I would have stayed there until I froze and died. Recovery depends enormously on support. The depressives I’ve met who have done the best were cushioned with love.”

In lieu of love, the affection of buddies might do.