Aside from being contacted by a family member or maybe some sort of contact information being left in a will, how do you discover if someone you know has died?
If they’re famous: From the news.
If they’re family: Other family.
If they’re friends: Hopefully other friends or their family.
If they’re a stranger: I don’t, unless their story ends up on the news or as a movie or something. 🤷🏻♂️
You’re trying to find out if she’s ghosting you or just a ghost?
Clever haha
Fortunately no, it’s just a hypothetical for now. But I’ve been thinking about it for a while in regards to old friends that I don’t keep up with.
Google their name. If they are deceased and not famous, chances are that the top results would include their obituary.
If I Google my name it comes up with the victim of an unsolved murder in the US. Quite good for privacy, but it must discombobulate some old acquaintances.
Only if it’s an uncommon name, otherwise you get a dozen linkedin profiles.
I’m thinking this too. Like I currently have a disease with a high mortality rate, will my partner, friends, family properly spread the word if I die, or are there some people I care about who it’ll never reach, I wonder.
The authorities will try to notify someone in the immediate family (often the spouse). After that, if you are in their estate, the trustee should make a good faith effort to contact you. Beyond that, it’s normally just friends and family contacting each other.
Back in the days when printed newspapers were common, some folks would check the obituaries regularly.
You could create a Google alert. If the stupid thing actually works, you should get an email when their obituary gets posted somewhere.
The authorities often go with address if they don’t have any other clues. When my mom died, she lived with her sister, who hates me and my sister… We found out by chance because my mom’s boss reached out to offer condolences, and then we had to call the coroner to let them know she had living kids. Her sister hadn’t revealed our existence.
Back in the days when printed newspapers were common, some folks would check the obituaries regularly.
Always hoping to find your arch nemesis in there 😅
At 4 AM, bleary-eyed, answering a phone call from my mother (the second time she’d tried) to be told that my father probably can’t hear words anymore but that she’d put it on speakerphone in case I had any words to speak before the life support was removed.
His condition went from stable and active to on the edge of death within a few hours. He had (mostly) survived three separate bouts of cancer and the most one was in remission (we’d all flown out a few years prior for the extremely risky surgery needed to counter the last bout).
I don’t think anyone learns about a sudden death in a particularly graceful way. If you want your loved ones to have more than a day’s advance notice euthanasia is pretty much your only option.
Search their name and where they’re from/living, I guess? Add “obituary” to get specifically death notices.
I don’t know if it works or how well, yet… but I’m sure I’ll find out sooner than I’d like.
This is how I found out a couple of my old acquaintances had passed. I searched them up and found their death notices.
On the other hand, I have a friend with whom I made a pact to notify our respective families if we start to go down because we care but are not in regular contact.
I’ve found out from Facebook before. But sometimes you don’t find out until years after the facts.
Obituaries exist too.
There’s a disturbance in the force.
You can’t know unless someone tells you or you go seek this information yourself. Another way besides contacting people or looking for an obituary is lurk on social media, if you know that person’s relatives and friends you may find some kind of mention or post about it. That is, if they also have you as a contact or if they make the post public.
Figures. So for online friends you’re pretty much hopeless?
Unless you have shared connections or know who they are to search for an obit, yes.
When my best friend, that I had met online but we also got together in real life, killed himself, his mother called me to let me know. I in turn got in touch with as many of our old EverQuest and World of Warcraft friends as I could to let them know.
Ever heard of obituaries? Daily listings of people who have died.
Not everyone gets an obituary. Most of the people I know who died didn’t get one, or if they did it was in a small town newspaper thousands of miles away where they grew up instead of where they lived their adult life and died.
That’s very interesting. It was my understanding that, especially now with global informati9n at least ostensibly available online, that obituaries would br obviously available.
Is that still the case nowadays?
The internet doesn’t really live up to its reputation in that regard. There’s all kinds of things that never end up on the web, or if they do its so obscure you won’t find it unless you know where it is already. If someone has an obituary in a random little newspaper you’ve never heard of in a town you might not associate with the person who died because they lived in your city for decades, and that town is on the other side of the country, even if that obituary does get indexed it’s not an easy find unless they have a very unique name. I have a friend who moved less than 50 miles away a few years ago and I found out he died earlier this year, I’ve never been able to find his obituary. There may not even be one, and if there is it could be published in any number of different places because he lived in a lot of different places. I think most of the people I’ve known who have died haven’t had an obituary at all, or if they did I wasn’t aware of it. It costs money to get them published and I don’t think it’s a priority for a lot of people after someone has died. Even if they do get published they aren’t always easy to find. This is in the US at least, maybe things are different in other countries.
Food for thought. Thanks.
That makes me sad. Online obituaries are cheap and easy these days.
How long ago was this? They’re usually online now.
In the case of my mother, who lived in a different state with family that hates me and my sister… From her boss, who had my sister’s number from some recent situation. Wouldn’t have found out for ages if it hadn’t been for that. Sometimes I wonder what that would have been like, but I’m glad I don’t know.
If you don’t already, make sure at least one person close to your family/friends that you’d want to know about has your number and knows to get in touch.
