Last Updated on January 21, 2017
This is the kind of story that I wish could have been an April Fools’ Day joke.
An elderly woman apparently died nearly five months ago inside her home, but no one even missed her.
Failure to pay property taxes led to her home being put up for auction.  When the new owner of the home noted a car parked outside the house that didn’t move for a week, he called police.  The Calhoun County Sheriff says he called the power company and learned that electricity had been cut off in February, because that bill hadn’t been payed, either.
So he sent a deputy to investigate, and the deputy, upon entering the home, found the woman’s body on the bedroom floor, and the body of her dog near her.
I think all of us, on some level, have this fear of dying completely alone, our death not even being noticed.  This woman’s final moments, no matter how peaceful or painless they might have been, were spent living out a nightmare.
Neighbors described her as reclusive, saying that it isn’t unusual for them to go long periods of time without seeing her.  She apparently had no children, and if there were relatives somewhere, they didn’t seem to miss her, either.
Calhoun County, in its eagerness to collect property taxes, never bothered to investigate why she wasn’t paying up.  When she didn’t send a check, they stepped in — but only on paper — and put her home up for auction.  Someone else bought the home, and at no point during this process did anyone take the time to actually go there and see if something might be wrong.
That’s shameful.  Appalling.
Inhuman.
If money means that much to us, maybe the financial crisis is exactly what we all deserve.
This part says a lot about where we are as a society: “Neighbors described her as reclusive, saying that it isn’t unusual for them to go long periods of time without seeing her.”
What happened to the idea of looking out for those around you, at least in terms of making sure they’re, oh…I don’t know…ALIVE? There’s nothing wrong with checking on someone, and most reasonable people who know the difference between meddling in a neighbor’s life and simply making sure that an elderly or sick person is doing okay.
I’m with you, Patrick. Appalling, indeed.
It’s sad, isn’t it? I wrote several years ago about a man who died, alone at home, and no one missed him for over two years. He was estranged from his family, and somewhat of a recluse, so people were used to never seeing him. He had set up automatic banking, so his pension cheques were automatically deposited, and his rent and bills were automatically withdrawn, and he died of a condition that causes a natural mumification of the body, so his neighbours never smelled anything amiss, either.
Are you my keeper? Is my 80 some-odd-years-old neighbor responsible for my welfare? Or is the County Sheriff’s deputy who cruises by once in a while responsible for checking on my welfare if I fail to mow the grass for seven years? No meter readers – it’s done automagically over the mains. I am my own water and sewer company. I probably miss more trash pick-up days than I make as the local ordinances make it illegal to put the trash out the night before, but pick-up is at 7:00 in the AM, long before my second shift worker ass gets out of bed…
No. They are not responsible for me. If my wife were to die, there would be no one responsible for checking on me. My family is dead and gone. My step-children rapidly approach grandparenthood and have neither the time nor inclination to check up on me some 2000 miles away. So if I were to die and fell out on the bedroom floor, it might be a very long time before I was found. Particularly as I do not mow my (now overgrown) lawn due to severe allergies.
No one is to blame. It is not society’s job to worry about my welfare. The folks where I live have, for the most part, the virtuous habit of minding their own business and leaving me to look after my own.
That is the way it should be.
So, I suggest a more charitable view towards the municipality who sold the property at auction for back taxes is in order. They were just doing their job. And trust me, if they hadn’t, some other individual would have taken offense and gotten on his high horse to decry the welfare state and the birth-to-grave mollycoddling of its citizens.
You can’t win for losing when working for the government.
mmmk, thanks in advance for tonight’s dreams…. 🙁
Wow. Unbelievable.