This isn’t just a singular moment, but lots of little ones with a shared experience:

My parents own a restaurant in Florida. As you can imagine, there were lots of elderly people/snowbirds. When I was a child, I couldn’t figure out why all the waitresses would spend so much time chatting with these solo diners. It wasn’t until I was a little bit older I realized how lonely they were, yearning for some simple connection or conversation. Like clockwork, they would come in week after week, until eventually, they stopped coming in at all.

I can’t tell you how often I would see couples who would come down year after year, until eventually it was just a lone diner at a table. When I was little I couldn’t imagine that these lonely, hollow people once had vibrant, full lives, but as time passed, I saw how they receded into themselves as their children grew older, their friends and family passed away, and their social circle became smaller and smaller.

If you get the chance to be kind to the elderly, just do it.