Dead in bed and undiscovered for 20 years!

[RallyRallyAppreciateIt]

He had family, yet this man lay dead in bed for 20 years. So awful for them to think for all those years that he had gone nc, only to discover he had actually died and no one knew!

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/cork-inquest-hears-mans-body-lay-undiscovered-for-20-years-1543934.html#:~:text=He%20was%20discovered%20under%20a,allow%20Rentokil%20to%20go%20in.

😥Not a bad way to go though. Get into bed, put your head on the pillow and close your eyes forever. It doesn't get any better than that.

That’s so sad though, I mean he could’ve been in that bed a while before he actually died, he could’ve been ill or anything 😢
He missed collecting 3 payments of jobseekers and then they just cut him off, surely the system should be better and try to at least to contact him?

Very sad

He was only 62 as well.

I agree - sounds perfect. One day or 20 years makes no difference when you know nothing about it.

What a shame nobody cared enough to check on his welfare x

It's so incredibly sad that no-one thought to check up on him.

His sister did and went to the local police station to make enquiries. I think the mistake she made was that she didn't initiate a formal missing persons enquiry. Just accepted the reasoning that he must have moved to England if he wasn't in Ireland.

He missed collecting 3 payments of jobseekers and then they just cut him off

As Alan Partridge would say, "This country!"

The fact he made diary entries on one of the days he missed a payment, he could have planned to go the next day or some I suppose but then became unwell. I think I would torture myself with ‘what ifs’ if he was my sibling. So young!
A report I read earlier never mentioned anyone trying to contact him so I’m glad I found this story. He wasn’t unloved and just forgotten.

As others have said, not a bad way to go. Would you prefer to die in hospital, with the resus team pounding your chest and trying to get air into your lungs? Or maybe in a traffic accident?

I was lying in bed the other days, staring at nothing, and thinking "I'll probably die in this room." Not a bad way to go.

I think that response misses the real point, which isn't really about the dead but the living and their values.

A lot of our societies "caring" attributes are, if we're honest, mostly measured in a calculating and self serving way. Our western societies is set up in a quite an atomised way, individuals or small family blocks. It's not a perfect way to describe everyone, but generally it's true

It sounds as if he died peacefully, young though he was. Rest in peace, Mr O'Sullivan.

Even death in bed can take many days or longer (recent personal experience, obviously not of my own death). People can get very afraid, lonely and regretful while dying slowly in bed.

It’s a pity his family members actually went round to his home a few times to look for him but saw it was boarded up – they didn’t realise the home had been boarded up with his body in it. They’re all old enough that letters, which they mention, or in person visits were their primary means of communication.

Very tragic story.

He owned the property then ?
What about gas, electric, water bills ?

How did this property get boarded up and left for so long ?

One of our woodland neighbours died like this. She was very reclusive. Her dog died too. It's awful.

Sounds like a lot of assuming and no making sure. The neighbours didn't notice that the curtains just closed one day and never opened again. The siblings didn't think it strange that their brother just vanished to another country and didn't tell them. The council boarded the house up without going in to at least find any contact details.

Agree with this!

I may be quite cynical but reading the newspaper and the sister’s statement I get a sense of someone who wasn’t too successful at life, didn’t have close relationships, whose marriage didn’t last and whose siblings ( and the police) “ assumed he had gone back to England” when he failed to give any signs of life. The neighbours say he had “ gone shopping or gone away”. I suspect he had longstanding mental health issues and had become quite isolated. It’s as if it suited everyone to think he was elsewhere.

That would be my dream way to go. Peacefully, asleep, in my own bed, without upsetting anyone who knows me, no fuss or drama.

I don't think it's sad actually

So the house was boarded up without anyone going in to so much as pilfer anything let alone to look around and the mans body lay smelling and rotting and decaying in there that long without detection? Very odd.

A lot of derelict cottages in Ireland are isolated and have no mains gas or water so are under the radar. Unfortunately this same scenario has happened in London the last few years. It can happen anywhere. So very sad.

He diec in Cork Ireland ...

It's odd (to me) that they were seemingly in contact but accepted that he had gone to England without telling anyone.

They would have tried contacting him and you would have thought they would have asked the police to do a welfare check at his address after he wasn’t responding.

We're all assuming he went peacefully in his sleep because there is nothing else to go on. But he could have had months of agony from something hideous and wasn't able to summon help. I really hope he did just go to sleep and not wake up one night.

I'm astounded that they can just board up a property without having to actually go in to assess it. Obviously because there may be someone dead inside, but what if someone was squatting inside and you board them in.

There was a case of a woman who died in her flat in London and nobody checked it for 2 years. The neighbours reported it repeatedly and the police attended but never went in. So sad that people can be so alone.