<p>Have you heard about this story? I can’t stop thinking about someone who is so isolated and so cut off from family and friends that no one notices her missing. Her body was only discovered after the mortgage company foreclosed and a repair worker was sent to the house. A few links with details:</p>
<p>I’ve read that people with meaningful relationships live longer than loners - and while I don’t think anyone meant it so literally - this story is a twist on that advice. Sad to think that she died alone, in her garage, and no one realized she was missing. And not as if she lived in the wilderness - right in a suburban community.</p>
<p>Do we have a responsibility to check on our neighbors? How different might her life have been if someone reached out to her and invited her over for coffee? Just seems like the smallest efforts might have made a huge difference.</p>
<p>Her bills were on auto pay for SIX years? She must have had a huge chunk of money in the bank. The story is sad, but also a bit strange. Something is missing in the tale.</p>
<p>To be honest, it wasn’t incredibly uncommon for families to just up and leave in a day when the economy around here crashed. There was a lot of shame in losing your home and so they just left, so the neighbors thinking they moved to California makes sense. Plus, the house sitting empty for several years would raise NO eyebrows in many places around here (sadly). </p>
<p>She is apparently an immigrant. I do agree that it’s very sad that the family was so estranged that it went on for SIX years… but who knows what happened? </p>
<p>It’s been all over the local news here… the part that I think is weird is that they’re calling it not a suicide because the keys were in the “on” position and she was in the backseat. I’m not familiar with those types of suicides but to me that would indicate a suicide. </p>
<p>Actually I just read the article again… This strikes me as strange:
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<p>I don’t know too many people who would mow their neighbor’s lawn for YEARS without inquiring. </p>
<p>In regards tu bills being paid, it’s unfortunately not that uncommon. We’ve had customers at work set on on auto pay and their kids call ten years later because they never knew about the account. </p>
<p>What happened to her mail during all those years? Any mailbox would have been filled with fliers after a couple of weeks. Did she have a mail slot in the front door? How could a postal carrier not have noticed?</p>
<p>Hmmm. Our next-door neighbors spend part of every year overseas, and others go to Florida for months at a time. I’m not sure when I would notice something was wrong, especially if the lawn was being mowed. Perhaps a neighbor had a lawn service and told them just to always mow hers too, since she never took care of it. That could also have been going on long before she disappeared.</p>
<p>“I’ve read that people with meaningful relationships live longer than loners.”</p>
<p>Actually, I am not sure that’s true. I’ve read that consistency is what’s actually key. People who are married do live longer, but so do people who have never been married. Basically, it’s people who used to have a meaningful relationship but don’t any more (because of death or divorce) are the ones whose life is impacted.</p>
<p>I think too many sweeping generalizations are being made from this. This woman may have been depressed, which is always sad (but depression affect people with big families as well), but some people are happier being less social. I live in a city, so it’s a bit different, but I wouldn’t really be interested in going out for coffee or socializing with my neighbors. They are nice people, and I happily say hello, and will always help out, if they ever ask, but I have no interest in establishing any sort of a relationship. I certainly don’t want them stopping by, unless there is an actual reason.</p>
<p>Some people are less social and happy that way. I have a few close friends (though with moving around for schools/job, only one is close enough to see a few times a month), but I also love to do things on my own - a big fan of solo trips and travel - as in, even if I have a choice to go with someone, for the most part I would opt to go solo. I feel that there is a certain stigma about being less social. When I say I am going on a solo trip, I sometimes get surprised looks or ever comments.</p>
<p>When I get older and retire, is it possible that I could die and no one would know for a while (not six years, I wouldn’t think, but still)? I guess it’s possible. Is that a reason for me to change my life? Absolutely not. How soon after I die will people notice really doesn’t bother me one bit. I think often people get worked up over nothing with stories like this (well, this one is pretty extreme) - being on your own is not something to be pitied, IMHO.</p>
<p>Found in the back seat of the car with the keys in the ignition but off? Sounds like suicide by overdose or foul play to me. Perhaps this has something to do with the supposed “son” the neighbors saw…</p>
<p>I also wonder what prompted the “welfare check” by the police, way back when?</p>
<p>I don’t know her neighborhood, but a lot of neighborhoods in that county and across the state have half the houses abandoned. We’ve driven through a neighboring town and been shocked over entire streets of upper-middle class subdivisions completely empty. A few houses on a street I used to live on turned up empty one morning, moved out during the night-- we didn’t really ask questions, people are embarassed. </p>
<p>I actually wouldn’t know most of my neighbors if I saw them on the street, and they wouldn’t know me either. I’ve never laid eyes on all but two of them, one of which I haven’t seen since the day we moved in two years ago and the other I only see once every few months so I would probably never notice if he was gone. I don’t know any of their names. They don’t ever appear to spend any time in front of their houses! Were it not for the cars, I wouldn’t know the houses are occupied.</p>
<p>It’s obviously strange, but without more information I guess I don’t find it all that unbelievable though it’s very sad. I wonder where her family is. I saw something on the news the other day about a sister, the sister never called? I was totally estranged from my sister for six years but we still knew for sure she was alive… we were always hearing things about her through the grapevine. So-and-so’s good friend of my cousin’s girlfriend bumped into her at a party, that sort of thing at least.</p>
<p>This is a sad tale, but no, I do not believe we have a “responsibility to check on our neighbors.” It’s nice when neighbors get to know each other and look out for each other, etc., but I don’t believe it should be an obligation that everyone is held to.</p>
<p>I also wondered about family when I read this story. It could be this woman had not been in contact with her sister for a long time, even if there hadn’t been some big precipitating event. </p>
<p>Another sad case happened in Decatur, Alabama recently. A 76 yr. old man, whose first wife and a son predeceased him, was the caregiver for his 78 yr. old wife who has Alzheimer’s. He had two other sons who live in the same town but apparently did not keep contact with their father. Someone contacted the police to check on the couple, and they discovered the man had been dead in his bedroom for about a month, along with two dogs (who had also died.) The wife, unaware of what had happened, was in very poor condition. I can’t imagine the guilt if I were one of those sons.</p>
<p>After dh retires, he wants to have an arrangement with our kids that one of us will text them daily (usually just “Hi!”) by 5:00 p.m. If they don’t get a text they should call, and if we don’t answer, then it’s time to ask someone to check on us. If that doesn’t work out, then we’ll look into companies that provide similar services. I think he’s concerned about the prevalence of Alzheimer’s in my family and fears something like the tragedy in Decatur. </p>
<p>My mom’s brother passed away several years ago. He was a drug addict, an alcoholic, and was constantly moving. We would go years without hearing from him. Even my mom wanted to contact him (She didn’t), she would have no idea what state he was even in. </p>
<p>I honestly don’t even know how they contacted my mom. If he had died somewhere on the streets, especially strung out, we probably would have absolutely no idea that he died for years. </p>
<p>It’s sad but I can, unfortunately, see how this could happen. </p>
<p>I guess if that were the situation, I could see it-- we just don’t know anything about this woman yet. My older sister’s father lives a similar kind of lifestyle and has been missing for several years, and they didn’t notice until they all got together for a family reunion and realized no one had heard from him in a couple of years… he would usually call and check in with somebody once in a while, but everybody assumed he was calling somebody else and didn’t really think about it since he’s not part of their day to day lives anyway. We kind of just assume he died somewhere out of state without ID. Nobody knew where he was because he was on the run and he wasn’t a very good person anyway.</p>
<p>I doubt that this lady was someone like that given that she owned a house and had enough cash in the bank to pay her bills for 6 years without income, but you can’t help but wonder what the circumstances are that nobody ever realized something was wrong.</p>
<p>I understand that some people are less social, like their privacy and are fine with being alone. But I am unable to picture a person who wants no meaningful contact with any other human being - not a friend, relative, neighbor or former co-worker. Not even by phone or by email? I find that incredibly sad.</p>
<p>I have an elderly widow living on my block - and we generally do no more than wave and exchange a quick hello. Other neighbors rake her leaves and shovel her driveway. But I would like to think that if I didn’t see her for a few weeks, I would check and see if she was ok. I personally would be very upset if someone who lived on my block died and was not discovered for years! I think we can do better than that.</p>
<p>I read that her sister called her and wrote to her, but received no reply. Same thing with her mother. They thought she didn’t want to speak to them. The sister lives in MA and the mother in FL, so they would have had to travel to Michigan and knock on her door if they didn’t accept her wishes. And one gathers that she often traveled on business for weeks at a time, possibly even months, so randomly showing up might have accomplished nothing.</p>