On a sunny Sund ay afternoon, I was practicing golf with my daughters in the front yard when we saw an older man slowly making his way out of his house, two doors down, and over to us. I heard the screen door clang behind him and watched as the small, hunched figure plodded from his doorway down the steps to the sidewalk, clutching the guardrail, and then in our direction.

He came with the purpose of introducing himself to us. His name was Jim MacDonald. Now 88, Mr. MacDonald was born in Scotland, which is where golf was invented, you know. He’d wanted to get to America immediately after accounting school there. His brother, an engineer, got right in, but there was no room for Mr. MacDonald and his skills in the U.S. at the time, and little employment available in Scotland. He eventually found a job working for a big firm’s outpost in Trinidad. There, a chance meeting with the U.S. consul at a gala he wasn’t really invited to netted him a visa to work in Chicago, where apparently they needed accountants. He met his wife, Sandy, there. She shared his craving for mountains or ocean.

Exactly two years and two days after his arrival in Chicago, his visa requirements fulfilled, Jim and Sandy packed up their VW bus and were on the road West. Their plan was to hit Denver first; if he couldn’t find a job in Denver, then they were San Francisco-bound. If San Francisco was a wash, then they’d set sail for New Zealand, where they had friends.

As it turned out, Denver was their first and only stop, some 50 years ago.

Fifteen minutes or so had passed since Mr. MacDonald had first approached, and a familiar look passed over his face. “Well, I’ve been talking to you for a while now,” he said. The clock was upon him. I have felt the presence of this ticking clock on many occasions while talking with seniors in my work at a company focused on getting them active, and often wonder how many times our elders have the experience of being cut off or abandoned in the middle of a sentence. “I should let you get back to your day,” he said. “But before I let you go … you seem like a nice young man … and well, this is a nice block but it’s changed a lot. And mainly people just keep to themselves, and, well, my wife and I, most of our friends have died, and, well, oftentimes we feel lonely.”