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Comment by bitxbitxbitcoin | Hacker News Reader

To all those that identify with feeling this way... Remember that it's statistically impossible that no one will notice. For better or worse, at least the mailperson will notice eventually.

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That isn't so much your absence being noticed/cared about directly, though, as it is that your lack of carrying-out some expected duty of yours is impugning upon someone else's duties.

I don't find it very cheering to think that I'd only be discovered dead in my home because someone got angry that they couldn't fit any more mail in my mailbox, and complained to their manager about it. (Or because someone got grossed out by the scent of decay coming from my apartment, or because I never paid my bills and the repossessors attempted to visit me, etc.)

It's quite different in kind from even the most casual positive memory, e.g. a barista who makes note of the fact that a customer who they used to see every day at 3PM, isn't coming in any more.

A man I worked with many years ago died at some time after I had left the project. He did not come in to work, and did not answer his phone. After his family in another state had been unable to reach him for some time, they prodded the employer a bit. The project manager checked and found that the man had found dead on the street not far from his apartment. Since his wallet had been stolen, the police could not identify him, and the body was held as a John Doe at the morgue.

So yes, the county police noticed at once that the man was dead, the employer almost at once that the man was missing or at least incommunicado; but putting the information together was the problem.

When we say "no one will notice", we mean that they won't care, that they won't have to substantially alter their way of life, or even their routine to accommodate one's death.

It was a shock to me, some years ago, on leaving an office job to start a new business: I had a group of what I considered good friends, we spoke on many topics, shared lunches nearly every day, went out socially on occasions. Not one of them dropped in to my new work to see how I was getting on [the reverse was impossible, it was a closed site].

They noticed I wasn't there, but it clearly made no substantial difference to them.

Very few of us will leave a legacy that impacts beyond immediate family and friends, I think for those of us in that boat we have to come to terms with it and not let that thought cloud our enjoyment of the time we do have.

With 8 billion people the memory of good deeds quickly gets lost in the melee of daily life.

How many of us live in apartments and have bills sent electronically?

Once the current generation gets old we could easily coast through life isolated without friends. We’ll all need dead man switches soon.

Woman's Dead Body Lies in Flat for 35 Years

https://www.foxnews.com/story/womans-dead-body-lies-in-flat-...

I'm not sure that level of "notice" gives such folks much comfort.

Decades ago I knew someone nearly homeless living in a downtown Chicago dive hotel, the kind of place you turned the bathroom light on just so the roaches would scatter before walking to the toilet.

They talked about the hotel management giving the younger and destitute tenants free months of stay in return for getting rid of the bodies and possessions of elderly tenants when they passed away.

Apparently it was somewhat common for poor elderly folks, alone in the world, to move into the hotel and have their government aid checks cashed for them by the hotel management.

By making them disappear after dying, the hotel continued to (illegally) collect the checks.

"For years, the payments went out of the woman's bank account. Nobody batted an eyelid. Bills were paid. And life went on as normal in the quiet neighborhood of Pontiac, Michigan. Neighbors didn't notice anything unusual. The woman traveled a lot, they said, and kept to herself. One of them mowed her grass to keep things looking tidy. At some point, her bank account ran dry."

https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/us/michigan-mummified-body-fo...

> The woman's mummified body was sitting in the back seat of her car, parked in the garage. The key was halfway in the ignition.

Truly macabre.

Roald Dahl couldn't have done it better.

It's the old joke... don't think anyone cares about you? Try missing a couple of payments...

FWIW I didn't check my mail once for something like 6 months, and they just stopped delivery on it. Nobody came to check on me, that's for sure.

Your logic counters my observations during 2 years underemployer, 52 weeks unemployed, and 25 weeks homeless... after 15+ years in good standing with the professional world (aka. with things people envied).

Not that I identify under said group but people can feel lonely living in a home of other people too.

Edit: fixed time

Well, how about this one? They noticed it after 5 months:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2515097/Oxfordshire...

The title is misleading, they have most likely only been dead for a few months since their bodies were found still decomposing.

There are other such cases:

A woman's skeleton was discovered in her flat three years after she is believed to have died, it emerged today.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4199730/Skel...

That's not the point though, noticing here means caring, not merely being aware of.

Not to mention tons of people have been found after weeks or months being dead without anybody noticing, so "the mailperson will notice eventually" is hardly a comfort.

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