I posted on Facebook, but that is horrifying and could totally happen to me OR my mother OR my uncle OR my aunt. We are all old and live alone (but they are obviously older than I am) We only check in once a week. I was doing daily during COVID, and then fell off. I am much more likely to get a welfare check because I live in a double, so I imagine the gentleman in the downstairs apartment would eventually notice at least the smell! I did get texts from folks checking in on me because I was working from home during our big snow event because I am a walker, public transportation taker etc, and it was too treacherous to navigate. They were afraid I would fall on the uncleared sidewalk, and frankly so was I!

My brother lives with his ex-wife, a son, and a granddaughter. He falls from time to time so I am grateful there are people around to help. My sisters each live alone. I told them both yesterday that I better see a text or message from them at least once a day! We do regularly send each other editorial cartoons, or reels, or other silliness. I encouraged them to step it up and send more. I hate the phone but text away or send me emails.

Over the summer one of our book club members in Otter Lake didn't answer her phone when my sister called to verify that she was picking her up to go to the meeting. Mona was concerned and went to check on her. Her doors were locked so she called my nephew who broke in and found her alive, but she had fallen in the bathroom and was severely dehydrated. She has lived in a nursing home since which is appropriate, but she was such an independent woman that it is hard. If it weren't for book club it could have been too late when she was missed.

It is too easy to imagine this happening to ourselves or one of our loved ones, so this story hits hard.

That said, I need to get some stuff done this week. Have to finish all the accounting crap, my house is a disaster, I haven't exercised, and I have a couple trips coming up. A friend is going to house sit and take care of the animals, so at least I got that arranged. And now the dog is staring at me and saying I need to get my ass in gear and take him to the park. (I do miss a back yard)

It was always nerve-racking when we didn’t hear from our dad when we expected to. The VA gave him a 911 necklace, but he always hated to use it because he didn’t want to “make a fuss”. They also gave him a scale and blood pressure machine that reported virals directly back to them every morning.

But his hearing wasn’t the best so if he left his phone in his room, he wasn’t gonna hear you calling. We had couple of workarounds - you could shout at him through the ring doorbell on the back porch for one thing. We also had a couple of Alexa devices that were registered to me so I could set a message to play as an alarm at any time. We also got one with the video screen so you could “drop in“ and see the kitchen and shout through to the living room or just listen for signs of trouble. When that failed there was nothing for it but to just get in the car and drive the two hours.

We also toyed with getting him an Apple Watch that would monitor his heart rate so that we could keep an eye that way, but the chances of him remembering to wear it consistently were slim enough that it probably would’ve created more noise than signal.

We got to know the neighbors a bit better towards the end of his life so we did have that option too, which was also a relief.

Bottom line, it’s really not easy if you’re not there even with a whole bunch of technological hacks and a person who does not have many privacy hang ups. And there’s really no substitute for people close by who can actively look in. Awful to think that they didn’t have that.

I also think that they must not have had any home health support which makes me feel so bad for his wife. My dad would have had to live full time in a nursing home for his last few years if my Mom didn’t have people to come help her a few times a week.

She was 30 years his junior. I’m assuming she did a lot of care for him.

Plei, yikes! Salvageable, at all?

I’m sure she was doing it all which is so hard.

Oh my gosh, Plei! That’s terrible.

It’s too hard.

I’m so glad my parents moved to where they are.

Oh, Plei! I am so sorry that this happened to your family. Sending love and whatever ~ma might be helpful.