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.

That is heartbreaking - that poor little boy. How frightened he must have been.

180,000 derelict houses in Ireland? That is criminal

I know, I read that and to be really cynical I thought hmm well, if this is true, if does it make us judge the government less for taking in 180,000 people we cannot house long-term?????

Why is everyone saying how nice it was for him to die peacefully in bed. He might have been in agony, he may have suffered for weeks. Nobody knows

English couple found dead in isolated Tipperary bungalow left estate worth hundreds of thousands. Nicholas Smith (82) and his wife Hilary (79) were found at their home in Cloneen after not being seen for 18 months

This happened in 2022. A couple who were as isolated as the man in Mallow.

A RECLUSIVE woman shared a double bed with her sister who had been dead for up to a year, an inquest was told yesterday

The two elderly Co Mayo sisters lived such a reclusive lifestyle that when one of them died it remained a secret, not only to the local community, but also to a brother with whom they shared a rural bungalow

And the above in 2004.

Yes, it's shocking. We have a huge housing crisis in Ireland. So many derelict houses.

Even in Dublin, where I am, I walk past so many potentially wonderful homes in the city centre, in the older part of the city that are completely falling into dereliction.

The planning and enforcement policies around this are really lacking, despite attempts to address it.

English couple found dead in isolated Tipperary bungalow left estate worth hundreds of thousands. Nicholas Smith (82) and his wife Hilary (79) were found at their home in Cloneen after not being seen for 18 months

This happened in 2022. A couple who were as isolated as the man in Mallow.

That's completely different.

That couple had by choice planned their deaths - or at least that they would die without intervention or knowledge. There was a complicated back-story, particularly in respect of the woman in this case.

While for many of us it is unfathomable, this was their choice.

They planned ahead in terms of payments made to the man who tidied their garden, and so on. Wrote letters to indicate they were going away.

It was in fact those people that they would usually interact with that realised in time that they hadn't been seen and followed up.

Local people knew and spoke to them while they lived there, but they were very private people - and that was their choice.

I'm not sure why you are selecting cases out of context or what point you are trying to make. There are always people who make different choices regarding their interaction with others.

To balance this out a bit, my allotment neighbour was an elderly Irish gentleman who had come here ( London) in the 50s. He was a widower and none of his kids lived locally, although they did check in on him periodically. He knew his next door neighbour well and the neighbour knew his routines . When he noticed the usual lights were not on one day he let himself in and found him on the floor, in a bad way but alive. An ambulance was called and he died in hospital a day later, with family
around him. He was well loved in the neighbourhood.

In my work I've come across this multiple times. Sometimes with survival though because someone noticed in time. There was the man who never spoke to his neighbours but they noticed the bin hadn't been put out and called the police. He was found stuck in the (empty) bath with grade 4 pressure sores and delirious from dehydration. The neighbours visited while he was in hospital and struck up a great friendship.

The most recent gentleman I remember was widower, no family and had dementia. A woman who worked in the bank noticed he hadn't been in that week as usual and called the police. They found him at the bottom of the stairs barely alive. Unfortunately he declined all help from social services and it will probably be that poor woman from the bank to notice when he does actually die.

If he had dementia shouldn’t social services have got involved with re homing him on a best interests basis? 🤔Maybe his dementia wasn’t Advanced enough .

That'll be me :(

Just living this now , police kicked door in neighbour been dead 2 months. He cut himself off , nc with family. The flies were how people were aware. Adults make choices, no way to know unless u risk annoying them. It’s not normal to die like that but it has shocked our community . People really tried with him but it’s how he chose to live. This has just happened.

He could have been murdered how can you tell 20 years later

You can tell if there is evidence of trauma / assault based on the skeleton, many years later, more than 20.

Sorry you feel like this . I don't want to patronise you but I hope you find someone you connect with even if it's just to wave to a neighbour as you pop to the shop.

Something similar happened with our neighbour in August. The street had noticed she'd not been out for two days. We normally saw her each morning walking the dog.

Unfortunately it appeared she had died suddenly in her sleep Wednesday some-time and was found on Friday. Dog still by her side, but otherwise fine. It saddens me that this happens probably a lot more than we realise :(

Fucking hell it reads like he went to Tesco then died, he wasn't seen for 20 years because no-one bothered enough to discover what had happened to him. This is some dysfunctional society we live in.
There's tons of people who literally have no-one this guy did have people in his life yet even they didn't seem to follow through on their enquiries.

Some people choose not to have contact with family - might have been a hermit by choice. A lot of mental health issues cause you to want to isolate. Maybe his family werent nice to him, maybe he wasnt nice to them. Who knows, might have been alone a long time before he died or they might have had an argue the night before and waited for him to apologise, when they didnt get one they just blanked him not realising he had died.

But at my lowest days i have wished i would just close my eyes and that's it, the final sleep. I mean we like to think people just dont wake up but that might not be true, just because you are in bed doesnt mean it was in your sleep or pain free. Doesnt mean he was alone when he passed - maybe someone like a friend was there and they never reported it thinking someone would find him.

My neighbour had a brain aneurysm, was fixing his car happy as Larry, stood up called for a cuppa tea and dropped like a stone before he could wipe his hands. Gone before he hit the floor. If i could pick a way that would be it, something i love then lights out, so long and thanks for all the fish.

That's a superficial, and not quite accurate, representation of the situation

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Apparently the social worker's capacity assessment deemed him to be capable of making his own decisions.

2 days is quite different to 20 years. She was lucky to have some lovely neighbours who checked on her. I think that's rare now.

I just looked at the house on street view and it looks quite a busy street and road. A couple of other houses are also boarded up. Not some abandoned part of the countryside but it does look the the kind of area you wouldn't bump into neighbours often as a lot of it are businesses.

I am 82 and would like to go like that. My daughter would get very upset though
She would be the one to find me.

My ex will probably die like this. He has absolutely no friends, speaks to no one except baristas in coffee shops and is no contact with his family - who live in the Netherlands.
He spends his days listening to music and working on his abstract field of research having lost his job at a university.
He also lives in squalor as he is ‘too lazy’ (his words) to do any housework. He owns his own home so could be there for years as all income and bills are on direct debits or bank transfers.
Very sad, but it is his own choice, and as a psychiatrist told me, he is a competent adult so no one can or will intervene. This is confirmed by his telling me that he tried living with someone (me, we lasted 4 years, God help me) and won’t be having another relationship.