If you went missing or died in your home, would anyone notice?

The reason no one will look for you is because they are sick of you using the word "literally."

r1 I literally use it correctly, though.

My Apple watch will call emergency services if I have a fall or misadventure OP. I really recommend it. Literally.

There are plenty of different watch brands with fall alert you can get - no need to get the Apple watch. Samsung make one - lots of brand do.

I live alone and am retired, so if something were to happen to me, the only way I'll be found is when the neighbors start complaining about the smell coming from my apartment.

I assume if you have home mail delivery the accumulation of stuff in the mailbox will eventually be noticed.

What river was this?

r5 noticed by who? I literally have no visitors and I doubt the mailman will care. My garden has looked derelict before and nobody noticed.

r3 How does that work?

Here we go R8:

You can also search "fall alert watches" and see if there's one you prefer. You'll need a cell phone to work it. You don't need any extra sim card. I'm 53 but I think everyone over 50 needs one of these.

Put simply - if you fall down, the watch will sense your fall. If you fail to respond to its messages then it will call 911 for you and it can also text up to 4 people to let them know you've had a fall and are not responding. Also with your exact L&L location with a map so you can be found. I made my elderly next door neighbor buy a different brand watch. She lives alone. It has worked several times already. I really recommend it. Worth every cent.

*And especially those of us who live alone and are getting a bit older could really benefit from a fall alert watch.

Literally.

thank you. It will sense my fall? What if I just sit down abruptly, like flop on the couch? Would the watch mistake that as a fall?

R11 Do you have access to Google?

Get a dog OP. It will bark if something happens to you. I've read that cats will eat their dead owner's body.

Yes, in a day. I have something going outside the house pretty much every day in good weather. In the winter, at least every other day.

Getting out of the house and being with people keeps me happy and sane. The quickest ticket to madness is isolation.

"fall alert watches" won't help much if you die in bed or seated

[quote]What if I just sit down abruptly, like flop on the couch? Would the watch mistake that as a fall?

No. Only a hard fall. It knows the difference. It's surprisingly excellent. It has saved the old lady next door several times and allowed several of us to help her in a medical emergency when she had some hard falls and nobody was aware for hours/overnight that she had fallen. Now we do. In one fall she broke her eye socket, nose, cheekbone, arm and wrist etc. It was awful. But I knew 90 seconds after it happened and was able to go and find her and call an ambulance. Those watches are pretty cool and they're not that expensive. You don't have to go all fancy if you don't want. Amazon (those cunts) would sell a large selection. Read the reviews and find one that suits you in features, comfort and price. There's plenty of online reviews and top 10 lists on the net. They really are incredible. They also track your health and exercise if you want.

Anyway - everyone should have one if they live alone and are getting older. Just do it.

[quote] "fall alert watches" won't help much if you die in bed or seated

Neither will a seatbelt.

But you should still wear one.

Weak argument, R15.

You can also get some paid medical tracking services if that's more your thing. These services are recommended by the National Council on Aging:

I think this is just modern society. People don't just drop by. I'm not single, but if my Hubby is away, I often think about what would happen if I fell down the stairs or choked...and yes it is scary. It's not just an older person's problem; it's a 2023 problem of society.

My grandmother had some sort of scale in her kitchen and a device that sat on her counter that had two large buttons: YES and NO.

Every morning during some pre-selected timeframe, she stood on the scale. Then she would hear a message:

[bold] Good morning. Is everything okay? [/bold]

And she would press yes.

And so on. It also monitored her weight and informed her physician’s office.

The same thing would happen before bed.

If she didn’t step on that scale, it would alert someone (my parents).

This was around 2007, so I’m sure there’s better technology now. We appreciated having this device.

A good film on this topic

I have a neighbor I visit virtually every day after dinner. I walk my dog over to her place and chat with her while our little dogs hang out. If I don't go over for some reason, I'll call her to tell her why I'm not coming, or she'll call me to see if I'm OK.

They taught us to use the "buddy system" when I was in the Army, OP. Just pick someone you think you can trust and get to know them well enough that you can check on each other daily. My 82-tear-old mother fell down in the bathtub and couldn't get out, and laid there for two days until her daily-call-friend alerted my sister closeby who rescued my mother from the tub.

Just a thought.

Oh, dear -- my (at the time) 82-YEAR-old mother.

No not yet. I died years ago. Still here.

Now we know what that smell is R24...

My husband might.

I'd hope that my partner would notice. If not, well then we've got trouble, right here in River City.

This used to be one of my great fears. I used to travel extensively for work - often two weeks at a time. Often my co-workers wouldn't know where I was and would have to ask if I was going to be in the office any time soon. Very often, even my boss had no idea where in the world I was since I'd simply email whatever updates he needed to keep him informed about the status of various projects or when I needed him to do something, such as reach out to another senior executive on my behalf (for one of his projects, obviously). Also, I worked on a floor where both national and global executives and staff worked, so they also traveled extensively.

So, it was not uncommon for no one from work to see me for weeks on end. Since I was traveling a lot, my friends would also not hear from me until I got back home or the occasional email when we were making plans for something a few weeks out. Same with family. Pre-pandemic, few people facetimed or used zoom to keep in touch and calling while international, while the firm paid, was complicated due to time zones.

I remember once getting such bad food poisoning while in Poland that I thought I might die in my hotel room. I disappeared for two days and no one knew where I was, but worse, it didn't occur to anyone to look because they all just figured I was on the move and busy, so wasn't returning emails as quickly as usual. After Poland, became more diligent with making sure someone always knew where I was and where I was supposed to be.

Also, I had a former teacher who died because he collapsed from pneumonia in his home, but no one found him for a week, so he died.

I'm still concerned about what would happen if I've fallen and I can't get up in my home.

[quote]I'm still concerned about what would happen if I've fallen and I can't get up in my home.

Why don't you purchase a fall alert smart watch R28? I don't understand.

They have call services. Here's an example:

[quote] So, it was not uncommon for no one from work to see me for weeks on end.

Try to imagine their relief.

I've thought about this often.

Work would be the first, but only because I have a boss who insists we tell her where we are working if not in the office (i.e., let her know when we're working from home). Outside of that, it would be a solid few days, likely at least a week or more before anyone on a personal level noticed. And my poor cat would be on his own. Work is my only lifeline.

My family members are all based at the other end of the country, and because I don’t really enjoy texting/whatsapp, it would take a few days before they would worry about not hearing from me.

Closer to home, I have a handful of really close friends who would worry about not seeing/hearing from me after a day or two.

During the week, it is definitely my colleagues who would notice my absence first. Indeed, I got stuck on public transport for an hour with no phone signal, and by the time I arrived at my office an hour later, they were asking HR for the number of my emergency contact person and deciding who was going to drive to my home to check on me.

My plan if I have an accident at home is to scream really loudly and hope my annoying neighbours don’t just wait for the noise to stop…

R26: "Why - he thinks the sex is the same but the dishes are piling up in the sink?"

Knock off the self-pity. Having someone around doesn't always help.

I knew a woman and her sister (70s) who lived with one sister's husband.

A cousin stopped by with some produce and entered by the kitchen.

"Where's Dave?" she asked.

He's in the living room. He's been up watching television and won't answer when I call him, so to hell with him."

The cousin checked and he was dead, apparently for two days.

Dave did the onlysensible thing in that living situation.

My mom would have EMTs in my home within minutes

Unless I hire a check-in service, I could lie here dead for weeks. When I was working, it would never have been more than a few days because people would have noticed my lack of response to emails and would have called my emergency contact because I was pretty reliable about such things.

Now, no. I have a local friend I exchange texts with every day or so, but I often ignore his texts because they’re boring and repetitive forwarded links rather than actual conversation. He probably wouldn’t notice anything until close to a week went by and then wouldn’t know what to do because he doesn’t know anyone else that I know.

My closest friend and emergency contact lives two states away, and we only talk about once a month. Unless she happened to text me right after my untimely demise, it could be quite a while.

I'm definitely considering a check-in service.

R30, thanks, that sounds interesting. The only thing is, you do want to be able to set how long they wait for your response without calling your contact. Unless you're on your phone constantly, it's easy to miss messages and texts.

By the way, you should tell your contact, that they are, in fact, your contact, and make their task easier by giving them a set of keys and the phone number of your attorney.

I say attorney because, in this situation, you should make a will using a lawyer, not the internet, and make the lawyer your executor. Put him in charge of your affairs after death and give him instructions for disposition of your remains, etc. Instruct him to help your heir(s) with any paperwork.

His fees will come out of your estate, but this is kinder to your heirs and ensures that things are done they way you want.

Example: My best friend doesn't know the remaining members of my family. I haven't kept them apart deliberately; they just never met. Rather than burden her with a list (which she might lose), I gave my lawyer a list of people to notify in the event of my death. The two of them can work out who calls whom.

Every once in a while I look into various dead man's switch email services - essentially, they send out emails if you do not click a confirmation to stop them.

The apps require that you have your phone with you or are wearing a smart watch. But, given the number of accidents that occur in the home in the bath tub or by falling down stairs, the odds that you'd actually have a device with you when you collapse are pretty low. Also, if I were having a heart attack, I'd be trying to dial 911, not some check-in service.

If I died I think no one would come to my funeral.

[quote]Also, if I were having a heart attack, I'd be trying to dial 911, not some check-in service.

R41, of course. And when you didn't answer the check-in service's next text or call within a certain number of hours (ideally, that number is set by you), they would call your contact. Your contact is probably someone who already knows you're in the CICU at St. Elsewhere because they're probably the same person as the emergency contact you gave the hospital (or who is listed in your wallet if you arrived unconscious).

A pure dead-man switch is too easy to forget. I prefer the idea of a text you have to respond to within, say, 12 or 24 hours.

R42 we’ll hire mourners

Ooh, R44. I'm retired and looking for part-time work. Hire me! I have a nice dark gray suit, white shirt, solid navy blue tie, black over-the-calf socks and black hard-soled dress shoes. I am well-groomed and look very bourgeois and respectable. Having been well brought up, I know how to conduct myself at wakes, "viewings" and funerals, both religious and non-religious.

I can look solemn and deliver platitudes in an appropriately somber and quiet voice. Or, I can smile and bring a tear to my eye remembering "the good times", even though I don't know the deceased from Adam.

I am the perfect mourner. Hire me!

I have a bad back, though so don't ask me to be a pallbearer. Is that a disqualifier?

What does "...would anyone notice?"mean?

It would probably take a while before someone realized I was dead. Since I stopped drinking, I feel better about things, though.

my mom is afraid i'll fart and she'll miss it

And if I disappeared

Do you think they'd ever look?

Would i be headlines in the paper?

Or the cover of a book?