When my mother died in 2020 at the age of 87, her death certificate listed the cause of death as “heart failure,” but it should have also included, “accelerated by pandemic-induced social isolation and loneliness.” Even before the pandemic, my mother, like so many other seniors, struggled with loneliness after she retired from a career of teaching high school English. The pervasiveness of loneliness in our society is profound, an epidemic that has only gotten worse in our post-COVID world for a variety of vulnerable populations, not just seniors. This time of year, during Thanksgiving and the …