Old men like this are often feared figures. Men who live without wife or children, who have lost or never had a vocation, are like men next to their own car crash. They stand next to the wreck of it all, looking disoriented, and we drive past. We might gawk for a moment, but most of us also fear to look too closely. We fear what it would be like to intervene. And we dread — consciously, or subconsciously — ever ending up in such circumstances ourselves. We hope that a subtle nod, mere recognition of the man, is a good deed done.

We expect, usually correctly, that men like these are socially burdensome. Socialization really is a skill that can atrophy over time. Some of us have dimly sensed this over the last two years. We expect that engaging men like these, even gently pulling on the thread of their lives, will leave them and ourselves completely entangled and lost in their mess.

I’ve seen men try to escape this fate through the bottle and an early death. I’ve seen other men suddenly and unexpectedly avoid this lonesomeness by transforming their lives — a whole conversion of lifestyle — and suddenly bloom. I’ve seen others just do something — anything to recreate a social role. One character I remember from my boyhood, a veteran, used to stand on the side of Route 6 in Carmel, N.Y., and just wave at the traffic. He somehow transformed his lonesomeness into something like universal admiration among locals. He was our mascot, our sentinel. He was our soldier, manning his post until the end.