this is the saddest thing ive seen in a while…I wonder how anymore like it they’ll find all over the world …
Guy Williams, from Zorro and Lost in Space, had been dead for a week in his apartment before his body was found.
My SS and pension are automatically deposited, and all my bills are paid automatically. I could see something like this happening to me if not for family nearby. Well maybe not for 2 years, but a few months at least. Makes one wonder how often this is repeated around the world.
The article says something like “she was loneliness personified.” I dunno about that. If she desired no social interaction, that doesn’t necessarily mean she was “lonely.”
As FairyChatMom observes - it might be decent social policy to have auto deposits/payments require something like an annual “click here to prove you are alive.” But if someone doesn’t have a computer…
I dunno - maybe local police/social services could do annual safety check doorknocks/phone calls. But I’m not sure the frequency of this sort of thing warrants such efforts.
She never received any mail? I would think our mail-deliverer would notice something as the junk mail piled up. And if we never mowed our lawn/raked our leaves/shoveled our walks… But if we had services auto-paid…
If someone lives their life in this manner, I’m not seeing it as a horrible thing that their passing is not noticed.
From a New York Times article (gift link accessible by anyone) on elderly people living and dying alone,
The first time it happened, or at least the first time it drew national attention, the corpse of a 69-year-old man living near Mrs. Ito had been lying on the floor for three years, without anyone noticing his absence. His monthly rent and utilities had been withdrawn automatically from his bank account. Finally, after his savings were depleted in 2000, the authorities came to the apartment and found his skeleton near the kitchen, its flesh picked clean by maggots and beetles, just a few feet away from his next-door neighbors.
As a person voted most likely to die alone and never be found, I go along with the opinion that this isn’t horrible. She was doing what she wanted,most likely.
Other example:
Marie Provost, anyone?
“That hungry little dachshund!” 
BTW - if you are not familiar, the entire album definitely requires a listen for anyone who enjoys catchy pop and tasty guitar work. For my money, it is tough to beat the combination of Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds. But I digress… 
More people are living alone than at any time in history. More people have no real social ties than at any time in history. As the populations of westernized countries become increasingly aged, I assume this will become more and more prevalent.
I corresponded with a guy who does crime scene cleanup, suicide cleanup, and just plain cleanup. One of his extreme cases involved a guy who died in his bathtub and wasn’t discovered for a month.
He told me that many of his suicide cleanups are in vehicles. He cleans them up to ready them for resale. Looking for a deal on a late model car?
A recluse died in an apartment above my dad’s dive bar. They had to chip him off the toilet seat. Too bad whatever mental idiosyncrasy that causes some of us to be loners isn’t also combined with whatever causes those cases of spontaneous combustion, where the body is reduced to ashes without singing the clothing
This thread is so sad. It’s okay to be a recluse, but please, please make arrangements to have someone check on you regularly.
Covid has made this scenario all to likely to repeat, and soon.
His mummified body wasn’t found sitting at a table, though.
Kevin Dubrow, lead singer of Quiet Riot, also had been missing for a week before his body was discovered.
Is it? I find it sad to imagine someone falling and needing help and not getting it, and slowly perishing while the world fails to notice. I also find it sad to imagine someone feeling lonely because no one ever checks on them. But someone who chooses solitude, dies peacefully at home, and just isn’t discovered for a while? I don’t see that as sad. Gross, but not sad.
I agree as long as pets aren’t involved. Then it is sad because the pet either died or ate their owner and was put down by grossed out people when it was discovered.
Oh yeah, that would definitely be sad for me. Please, people, check on your elderly neighbors’ pets!
But did the person actually choose this? And did they choose to take their pet with them, the heck with the pet’s suffering?
We don’t know. I’ve got nothing against dying alone, if it is your choice, but you know that isn’t the case for all deaths of this type.
This reminds me of the story of Bobby Driscoll. He was found dead in abandoned apartment building surrounded by empty booze bottles. The sad part about this story (well, there’s much about Driscoll’s life that’s sad) is that he died with no identification and so ended up being buried in an unmarked mass grave on Hart Island, NYC’s massive potter’s field.
Nobody was with him when he died, nobody knew he’d died, and to NYC he was just another homeless vagrant.
Something similar to this happened across the street from me last summer.
The guy who lived there was older, but not exceptionally elderly – probably in his 60s. He lived alone, and when he had a dog, we’d see him out walking the dog every day; that was probably the only time we saw him. The dog must have passed away the better part of a decade ago, and I hadn’t seen him since then. I don’t recall ever seeing him out in the yard, and we’ve lived here for 25 years.
The woman who lived next door to him (she lives directly across from us) would check on him once a week or so; my understanding is that he had no family. Last summer, she hadn’t seen him for a week, and he wouldn’t answer her repeated knocking at the door, so she called the police. They soon broke into the house, and found him dead inside.
The house (which isn’t in great shape) still has its front door boarded up, and there are still “do not enter” stickers from the police department on all the doors. I’m guessing that, once his estate (such as it is) goes through the courts, it’ll get sold, and either gutted or torn down entirely.
On the other side of the coin…
My sister, a nurse, worked with a doctor who didn’t trip any sensors. He did his job, and then one night he went home and killed himself.
The remarkable part is that he had planned the aftermath. He mailed a letter to the PD, telling them how he’d done it and where to find his body. He told them where he’d left the check for the ambulance. He left the name and phone number of the attorney who had written his will. And so on. This man’s bags were packed.
There are many sad stories like these, where the person is a recluse. There is extra sadness when the person is a hoarder. Maybe one of the big stacks of “stuff” fell over on them, or they tripped trying to navigate the piles of who-knows-what on the floor.
~VOW