Something's Bothering Me

I don’t know what’s bothering me more today – the sudden head cold that I just came down with or the news story about Winnipeg police finding the body of a man who had been dead in his bed for two years.  It’s sad that he had relatives but didn’t speak to them, and he had a few friends, but none of them cared enough to check on him.  And if it hadn’t been for the bank notifying the police for “financial irregularities” in this man’s account, who knows how long his remains would have remained in his bed. The man’s bills were paid by automatic withdrawal, and his pension checks were automatically deposited, so for two years, everything was paid on time so no questions were raised until the bank got suspicious over something and probably thought they were going get screwed so they notified police. 

 

One of his relatives was in town a year ago and called him, and when she didn’t get an answer she just assumed he was out of the house.  The saddest part of this is his neighbors in his condo – they hadn’t seen this man in two years, for Pete’s sake.  Are they so stupid or heartless that they didn’t ask the condo manager about him.  The worst are the people that lived across the hall from him.  The morons said “We thought he was on holiday.”  That is so senseless I don’t even think I can comment.  There are others to blame for this, too – the mail carriers.  They were supposed to notify their supervisor or their post office branch if they notice people’s mail just collecting in their mailboxes.  We hear news stories about how a mailman saved an elderly person’s life because they had fallen in the house and couldn’t get their mail for 2 days and the mailman called the police and they all lived happily ever after.  This poor man’s mail carriers emptied his mailbox a few times, and then would just throw the mail away.  The authorities said there would be an investigation as to whether or not the post office followed procedure.  Riiiiiight.

 

Yes, I realize that this man was probably a loner, but still how sad that he died like that, with nobody caring enough about him to check on him.  As I sit here and type this, I’m saying a short prayer of thanks that I have friends who I know would not let that happen to me.