A while ago, a Connecticut newspaper noted the first COVID-19 related death of an inmate in the state’s prison system. A 74-year-old man died among a group of more than 100 who had tested positive for the virus.

His was the first death. The paper did not name him. He was 50 years into a life sentence for murder.

That means he was 24 when he first went to jail. He had spent more than twice his “free life’ in prison.

What was he like? As an old man was he a mentor for those newbies who entered? Was he an embittered loner who had made some sort of unhappy truce with a life of incarceration and no chance of freedom? Was he reformed?

Now adjusted to a schedule, limited in expectations, limited in hopes, circumspect in dreams; putting one mental foot in front of the other until the journey was over. Or had his criminality simply continued?

Did he die a big fish in the prison pond, hated and feared — perhaps turning and turned into fear and hate?

What must his first 24 years have been like when he had spent an equal amount of time in prison as alive? When an entire lifetime of freedom, of making choices — although some bad ones — of organizing his own time, or not having a plan, was duplicated by a lifetime in prison: violence, sterility, living through routines he did not plan, tolerating menus he did not make, associating with people who would not or could not bring out the best in him.

What must his second 24 years have been like? How did he spend the day of incarceration that marked double his first life of freedom? What accomplishments could this 72-year-old man count?

The person whose life he took could not spend moments in retrospection, could not enjoy or regret the passing of years. There is a family and a story there. I’m sure the inmate re-lived that story a thousand, million times. Hopefully, he made some peace with it.

At 74, he went through two lifetimes in prison. In the end, he succumbed to a virus that gave him less escape than the walls and the bars and the endless head counts.

For 50 years he was known by a number. In a sweeping pandemic, he sadly became another number.

Michael Cronin lives in Norwich.