A sad statistic has come to light. So many lonely deaths in one state! Some of these lonely deaths have been high profile in that they made the news media and there was much to-do and beating of chests as a result. However, it comes to light now that there are hundreds of such deaths each year in NSW alone. The sadness of some soul spending their last moments in utter loneliness is hard to imagine… I wonder what fear overwhelmed them before that final moment of life when knowledge disappeared.
I grieve for what we have lost as we’ve progressed to affluence and self-serving. We have become so distant (and seemingly uncaring) from our neighbours, if we even know who our neighbours are. There are so many people to relate to these days… I can well understand a need to limit or contain the emotional drain and stress of so much interaction, especially so as I’m an introvert and find relating to many people at once very exhausting!. There’s also the issue of lawlessness abounding everywhere. Who can be trusted? Home invasions, robberies, muggings, and such mean that folk are much more careful. I wonder if some of the lonely have become more lonely because of fear. We may never know. One thing I do know, I want to be caring and aware of others, to encourage them with kindness and mercy, to love and appreciate who others are.
Have a good day!
Discovered: 300 who died alone - National - smh.com.au:
ALMOST 300 people died alone in NSW last year, only to be found weeks or months after they passed away.
Yesterday the body of a woman in her 70s, who may have been dead for up to two months, was found in her Belmore home. Neighbours called police after becoming concerned that the woman, who lived alone, had not collected her mail and that her yard was overgrown.
The State Coroner took custody of 299 decomposed or decomposing bodies in 2006 and 283 last year, figures show. All had been dead for at least seven days before their death was reported; some had been dead for almost two years.
Most deaths were due to natural causes, but some died by their own hand or in accidents. Most were found in their bedroom or lounge room. And only 22 of almost 600 had died in Housing Department flats over those two years.
On August 8, 2006, three sets of remains were brought into the morgue. A person whose body was found by a roadway had been dead for 627 days, it was discovered. Two other bodies, found separately, had been decomposing for more than 14 months. Some deaths were made public, such as those of two men who lived in Housing Department tenements in Waterloo. When their bodies were discovered in 2006 that all that remained were skeletons.
The latest such discovery was Jorge Coloma, an immigrant from El Salvador whose body was found in his Yagoona flat last week, 12 months after he died.
Sue Schreiner, a long-serving NSW magistrate and now an acting magistrate in Sydney, has been concerned about unreported deaths for 30 years. While working in the coroner’s office in the early 1980s she was so moved by the number of long-dead bodies being discovered that she conducted her own research into who all these people dying alone were.
She examined the 269 cases that came through Glebe morgue in 1981 and 1982 and found most were elderly, single men. Some were so isolated that their only human contact was with a rent collector or a bank teller.
Many of the bodies were only discovered because of the smell. The body of one woman was found only after her neighbours grew annoyed by blowflies.
At the time, Ms Schreiner mourned the loss of neighbourliness. Her feelings have not changed more than two decades later. “It seemed to me then, and it is still so today, that the solution lies with each of us,” she said.
The State Coroner, Mary Jerram, agrees. “We don’t have a sort of vigilant community that keeps an eye on each other.” Pat Daley, a Salvation Army spokesman and a founder of the now-defunct Neighbourhood Watch, said isolation of the elderly was worse than ever because necessities that once provided contact, such as bill payments, were now automatic.
“Australians are an uncaring society, generally speaking, compared to Asian communities and some European communities,” he said. “They tend to look after their elderly. It’s appalling the way we treat our senior citizens in some situations.”
The chief executive of Meals on Wheels, Les MacDonald, said only a fraction of elderly, isolated people used available services.
“Many people … objectively really shouldn’t be living by themselves, but they have the choice,” he said.
“There’s this level of pride … There’s also this sort of hangover of older people in their own homes who really do need a service like Meals on Wheels but look at it as accepting charity.”
Jordan Baker Chief Police Reporter
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