My life as a Medicare health insurance saleswoman has just begun. I can see already I'll have to work on not bringing these people, their faces and their troubles "home" with me. Here is a sampling of the people I've met so far.

Jodie, a 71-year-old black man, former member of a gospel trio that traveled nationwide. Jodie has no plans for Thanksgiving or Christmas. His apartment is neat but plain, the carpet flat, with no padding. His furnishing are modest and sparse. "My family and friends are all dead. I buried every one of them," he told me. "Some days I wake up and wished I hadn't. But what cha gonna do? You just go on." He smiles as he says all these things, then shrugs.

Mary Ann, 65, tall, emits a sense of grace and pride. Widowed a little over a year ago in Texas, she moved to Denver to be near her daughter and niece to escape the memories in the rural home she'd shared with her husband for all those years. She lives in a neat, older brick home and owns a Chihuahua named Taco. From the dining room, I can see into her bedroom and a tidily made single bed. "Across the street, I see my neighbor's brick house. Out back, I see that brick apartment building. Just over the edge of that roof, when the leaves are down, I can see the tops of three peaks." Her eyes are watery. "I miss the life I had. I miss the life I had when my husband was alive and healthy."

David, 48, disabled by a wicked industrial accident in which his apron was caught by a huge saw. His body was sucked into the blade. "I heard my bones breaking. I was conscious through the whole thing." He spent a three months in a coma, a year in a full-body cast and every moment since in pain. His townhouse is decorated in a Victorian theme, lavish and immaculate. David is tall and rangy, made for country and western bars. His loneliness is palpable.

Jorge, 30, disabled in ways I can't see, divorced with a 13-year-old son who has a close relationship with Jorge's ex-wife, almost none with him. His apartment is drab and dirty. Picked-up but not clean. He is overweight such that he has difficulty walking. The only photograph in his home is a framed picture of a smiling boy perched atop the television. "I might get to see him the day before Thanksgiving because he doesn't have school that day." The actual holiday, however, his son will spend with Jorge's ex-wife. When I ask to see his insurance cards, he has them at the ready. "I have everything," he says, then pauses, and smiles almost shyly. "Well, if I had everything, I wouldn't need you here to help me get this insurance."

The majority of them are women. Women left alone. With only a few words, they give me glimpses of their lives. "My husband left me money when he died, but because of it, my income is considered high. I can't qualify for any assistance. I'm barely making it." "When my husband died, I couldn't afford to live anywhere but here." "I visited him in the hospice every day for two months until he died."

I see joy, too.

One particular apartment complex has amenities I wish were offered here. Every morning, the men and women gather around a coffee pot in a sunny community room like hunters huddling around a campfire. They warm their hands around colorful, coffee-filled mugs. They gossip about the goings-on in the building.

Two of the women I've met there share an apartment. When the others speak of them, they glance knowingly - eyebrows arched - at one another. It delights me; the happy, elderly lesbians enraging their widowed neighbors. I see the two of them later, side by side, pushing their identical wheeled walkers down the hallway. "Do you cover disposable briefs," one of them, Sharon, asks me. "Linda needs those and they're $60 a month! Can you help us with that?" "Yes," I tell them, and they happily sign.

On another floor, women play pool on a chilly winter afternoon, chattering cheerfully in Spanish. They turn at the sight of me and shower me with bright smiles. It is my third visit to this building and already, nearly every face is familiar.

And I see humor.

On the third floor of this same lively building, I meet Deborah and Joe, a black couple who share a smoke-filled apartment. Joe is just starting his day when I arrive. He is out of sight, down the hall in their bedroom. "Boo," she yells. "You stay in there, OK? That insurance lady is here." He mutters something unintelligible in return, his tone mirthful. "Never mind how old she is," Debra retorts. "You stay there, you hear? Don't you come outta there nekkid!"

Everyone -regardless of their lot in life - smiles at me, and my name is rarely spoken. To them, I am simply "honey."

Each time one of these people signs an application, I make $70. I feel alright about this when I sign Joe, Debra and the other vivacious elderly I've encountered. Yet I leave the homes of the sad and lonely, signatures in hand, with little joy in the commission I've earned. I am helping them financially, yes. But that, it seems, is all I can do, and it feels so insignificant. It does not ease their heartbreak, fill an empty room, or bring back a loved one.

What I need to realize, and fast, is that the assistance I offer them truly is significant. It makes a positive difference in their lives. And in terms of what I can and should do for them, I must accept that that will have to be enough.

Since I first posted this last week, I met Francis. Francis merits an edit to this blog entry because Francis is happy. She is a skinny, tiny black woman with a big smile, thick glasses and white curly hair springing out from her head. She is 88, turning 89 in 10 days. Francis lives with her daughter in a brick house. With obvious difficulty, she stands to shake my hand, beaming all the while. When I tell her she looks happy, Francis nods.

"I am happy," she says. "And I eat right and do everything I can to stay healthy."

Her daughter, divorced and delighted about it, laughs. "She's something, I know."

I leave their home feeling light and realizing the key is seemingly simple, yet impossible for some to reach. The happiest old folks I've met live with someone. Be it their crazy husband, their lesbian lover or their daughter. They are happy because someone is there to share their days with them, to love them no matter how late the hour in their lives.

It shows me yet again how much we all need one another to thrive. We were designed as social creatures, no matter our age. Isolation, I think because it's an unnatural state, makes any of us sad. Isolation without hope, the kind I see on some of these individuals' faces, must be the loneliest place of all.

A friend of mine (who I hope is reading) told me years ago she plans to buy an island of her very own when she's older. "You, me, Nancy, Chris, all of us will go live there and be Golden Girls."

The first time she said this, I found it an odd idea. Why was she even thinking about this kind of stuff? We were in our 30s and my job then didn't bring me into regular contact with seniors. I gave little thought to aging at all, my own or anyone else's.

But now, as I'm suddenly seeing life from new angles -- and peering down the hall of life toward my still distant but steadily approaching senior years, Laura's idea doesn't sound so strange. In fact, it sounds mighty damn fine.