<strong><em>"Summer smilin' on the city, another lovely day in Sydney ..."</em></strong>

During the five years that I worked as a newspaper columnist, I wrote more than 700 columns. The one I wrote for publication on Sept. 17, 1998, wasn't the best column I ever did and it wasn't the worst, but it is one that stuck with me.

An elderly woman living alone in Chino Hills, Calif., had died in her apartment in the middle of March. She apparently died sitting on the sofa and watching television in her living room.Her body wasn't found until late May, more than two months later.

By then, her body had, well, sort of melted into the carpeting.

She didn't have any friends and she had never had children. The only reason she was found in late May was that her ex-husband -- who was living in Colorado -- had sent her two alimony checks that had not been cashed. He called the local police and asked that they send someone to check on her.

It cost her estate more than $6,000 to clean the room, to get the smell of death out. The carpet couldn't be saved.

[caption id="attachment_1288" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Mick"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Mick2.jpg"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-1288" title="Mick2" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Mick2-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a>[/caption]

I was 48 years old when I wrote that column, a lot younger than I am now. But I remember it very well, and there were few stories that touched me on a more visceral level. Maybe it's because I remembered a prediction my best friend Mick had made way back in the early '80s. He suggested that I might end up old and alone, living in a Skid Row hotel after losing a leg to diabetes.

<em>This guy was your friend?</em>

You have to understand the relationship. At any rate, I could picture myself in that situation, even though I have never had diabetes. I lived alone for most of the 12 years between my two marriages, and while I was much younger, I certainly could have found myself in a situation where I was unable to get help if I needed it.

But I had friends and family as close as the end of a telephone line. I can only imagine what it would be like to have a problem and not have anyone to call who knew me or cared whether I lived or died.

The quote at the beginning of this piece is from a wonderful song by Aussie singer Eric Bogle, "A Reason for It All," about a Sydney woman named Clare Campbell who died in her apartment and wasn't discovered for months. Bogle tells the story, and John Munroe sings in counterpoint that we shouldn't feel responsible when something like this happens.

<em>"That's how it is, don't look for a reason for it all."</em>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgjhhUEdozg&amp;feature=related

It's strange for us to realize that a person dying old and alone, feeling frightened and abandoned by the world, was once a small child who looked at the world in wonder and saw a bright future ahead.

Just as few people see themselves as villains, it's almost impossible to visualize a child thinking that someday she will die alone.

Our world has become so cold and callous to the suffering of others, and I would imagine that there are far more people singing Munroe's words --<em> "Lonely old people aren't my concern, from dust we come and to dust we return"</em> -- than taking Bogle's point of view, that there must be something we can do for the lost and lonely souls among us.

We are not born just so we can die. That might be the most powerful line in Bogle's song, and that's the one that stays with me.

Thirteen years ago, when I wrote the column about the Chino Hills woman, this is how I completed it:

<em>"I can't get her out of my mind -- wondering what she was thinking just before she died, or if she knew no one would miss her enough to wonder where she was.</em>

<em>"I don't know if there are good ways to die, but it's difficult to think of a worse one."</em>

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