Old and In the Way

Old and in the way, that's what I heard them say
They used to heed the words he said, but that was yesterday.
--David Grisman
"Old and In the Way"

There are a lot of older people who are alone and lonely. They seem to have a hard time hooking up with each other, for some reason.

You run into them all over the internet and see them in the streets and cafes -- solitary souls in their 50's, 60's, and 70's who have experienced an unexpected divorce or the sudden death of a spouse.

Sometimes I think they're mostly people who never planned on being alone. They find themselves unmarried, unemployed, without many close friends, and often with no one interested in paying the least attention to them. In many cases this isolation enters their lives suddenly, and without warning.

Most of them have children, but the children are busy with active, married lives of their own.

Victor Hugo wrote in "Les Miserables," "The misery of a child interests a mother, the misery of a young man interests a young woman, the misery of an old person interests no one."

Anton Chekhov wrote in "Gooseberries" that no matter how happy we are, "sooner or later life will show its claws."