I wanted to accomplish two things when I began writing the story that ran in Sunday’s paper. I knew that I might only accomplish one. From soon after someone died alone, I wanted to follow whatever process the city undertook to bury that person and settle the estate. And then I wanted to try to trace and understand that person’s life, to give at least some understanding of why he or she died alone. Though I realized that the very solitude of the death might mean the nature of the individual’s life would prove elusive. It might be simply a story about the death process, but I hoped it would tell more.

I imagined the story might take a couple of months.

After a little poking around, I learned that these sorts of deaths typically get taken up by one of the city’s public administrator’s offices. I more or less randomly approached the Queens office, which, after some deliberation, was game. The counsel for the office did mention that settling even a routine case might take a year or more. And that scores of people, in some fashion, would play a part.

So much for a couple of months.

Shortly after contacting the Queens office, a death that appeared more or less routine presented itself. Man named George Bell. Month after month, I followed the various characters that worked on parts of the process of settling George Bell’s affairs: medical examiners and junk removal people and auctioneers and crematory workers, individuals who touched some aspect of George Bell’s death but never got to know George Bell’s life.

A tip from a neighbor led me to a bartender who led me to a friend. A visit to another bar led to a phone call to someone in Florida who passed along my number to a man in Virginia with lots to say about George Bell. And so on. Steadily, I began to understand the George Bell who lived.