Just yesterday I watched the anime Sakura Quest, which shows a dying town with less than a dozen elderly residents left, who hang a lantern outside each evening for exactly this purpose - no lantern = something’s wrong. The show is fictional but based on a real location.
Myself, if I suddenly die, I expect my family members who live in town to notice my silence within two days. However my neighbors wouldn’t notice, and if informed probably wouldn’t care - and I wouldn’t expect them to. I do not involve myself in their lives and they don’t involve themselves in mine. And I’m okay with that.
If I die unmourned, that’s the optimal scenario. Why would I want to make other people unhappy? In my ideal world I would outlive all my siblings (and my parents), and then be distanced from my remaining family by the time I die. My heirs are going to have enough trouble dealing with my leftover possessions without having to deal with emotional baggage too.
Teddy (your favorite) has a proclivity to back up to stuff, hoist himself up to dump on top of them (weird-ass dog). I’m convinced if they come across my stoked-out corpse, I’m getting a big steamer on my forehead.
This conversation is quite apropos for something that’s going on in my life right now.
Many years ago – 25, probably – I was skipping school and found myself in a local cemetery. In the far corner of the cemetery, the one that appeared to be perpetually untended and abandoned, was a little grave marked only with an aluminum temporary marker, the kind that the funeral homes use. The grave was of a baby, and it only had a last name and year of death. It had long been overgrown with English ivy and other brush.
A couple weeks ago I found myself back in that cemetery. Wandering to the far corner where the baby’s grave was, I couldn’t find the marker… and after looking around for while I gave up and headed back to my car. Halfway across the cemetery I found the baby’s grave marker, discarded and just laying in the grass. I was fucking livid. I was sure I was the only one who even knew of this baby’s existence, based on the fact that her grave had never been tended and it was in an all but forgotten part of the cemetery.
Anyway, I posted a rant to the community Facebook page, something I never have done before, and lo and behold a distant relative of this baby reached out to me. She gave me a bit of background and thanked me for caring — she had long thought that she was the only one alive who even knew this baby had ever existed. She also told me that the baby had a sister, who also died as an infant, buried nearby. She gave me the name of the individual who had a plot map for the cemetery, and I will be calling them to see if we can locate this baby’s grave, and that of her sister.
I also had someone who owns a gravestone engraving business reach out to me and offer to donate a small grave marker for the baby. I told him about the sister, and after I scare up a couple of hundred dollars he will donate part of the cost of that marker as well. So in the end hopefully it will all work out.
My point, I guess, is that oftentimes people are forgotten. But even if a total stranger has even a passing familiarity with a person and is willing to acknowledge them… maybe that’s enough.
There was a cool case in Philadelphia decades ago. A wealthy, older woman with a pack of 12(?) dogs tripped while descending her staircase. Autopsy revealed she survived the fall, but was ravaged/killed by one or more dogs following her fall.
The woman’s family argued over what should be done with the dogs, given that at least one had fed on the owner.
A veterinary behaviorist set up an experiment. A mannequin was dressed in the deceased woman’s clothing and placed at the top of the stairs. A remote control device was used to cause the mannequin to fall down the stairs, and video was shot of the results.
It was shown that one dog ran to the mannequin and began tearing it apart, while the other dogs all ran away and cowered. The good bois were rehomed, Cujo was destroyed.
What was your neighbor’s name? Just the first name, if you’re concerned about her privacy. Knowing it would make it easier to think about her, and I do care about people who seem alone.
That is so kind of you to do that! How long ago were those children born? (Just name the decade, if you don’t want to be too specific.)
A couple years ago, I went to a large local cemetery because I wanted to visit Petland, and pulled over at an area that looked like it might be Petland, but it turned out to be Babyland. So many of the flat stones were starting to get overgrown with sod, and it made me so sad that nobody was trimming those areas. I know that many parents don’t visit because it’s too painful.
I would hope so, too. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
I used to live in an apartment building and I helped out my downstairs neighbor when he became terminally ill. He lived alone and didn’t have any living immediate family, but he had a couple of cousins nearby that made regular visits during his illness as well as a couple of close friends. My building was a co-op, which is similar to a condo, but several apartments were rentals owned by outside management companies -one which was notoriously sleazy. They owned my friend’s apartment and rented it to him.
While I was at his funeral luncheon with his friends and family, I got an urgent call from the super of the building. The management company was at the building with a truck and a couple of movers, looking to clean out the apartment because “Everyone knows he doesn’t have anyone.”
The super realized something was wrong and lied and told them he didn’t have a key. I told him that this had been discussed with the family and they would be paying his rent at the end of the month to give them time to clean everything out AND that we had checked this against housing law and determined that it was legal. Note that he had paid his rent at the first of the month and this happened on the 20th.
I then contacted the management company for the building, which is not the same company that owned the apartment and told them the XY Management had attempted to enter his apartment using deception in order to steal his possessions and that they did this during his funeral. I couldn’t get anyone to do a police report, they never gained entrance and there was a lot of confusion over who had standing to make a complaint.
But I did manage to get an official notice posted saying that XY Management had made an attempt to steal the contents of an apartment during the owner’s funeral and asked everyone to be aware and report any suspicious activity.
This was not unusual. It was policy for us to post these notices after any robbery or burglary attempt and to include detailed information on the crime. But I never enjoyed it more!
One of my grandmother’s friends told a story about staying at a friend’s house during a funeral, to act as a point of contact for anyone coming from out of town who had gotten lost. She got a hang-up call and was puzzled by it. When the older folks came back from the funeral, they assumed it was someone calling to see if the house was empty. That would have been about sixty years ago. Not new.
