[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-new-york-city.html?_r=0[/url]
[QUOTE]Each year around 50,000 people die in New York, some alone and unseen. Yet death even in such forlorn form can cause a surprising amount of activity. Sometimes, along the way, a life’s secrets are revealed.
The Queens unit employs 15 people and processes something like 1,500 deaths a year. Appointed by the Queens surrogate, Lois M. Rosenblatt, a lawyer, has been head of the office for the past 13 years. Most cases arrive from nursing homes, others from the medical examiner, legal guardians, the police, undertakers. While a majority of estates contain assets of less than $500, one had been worth $16 million. Meager estates can move swiftly. Bigger ones routinely extend from 12 to 24 months.
The office extracts a commission that starts at 5 percent of the first $100,000 of an estate and then slides downward, money that is entered into the city’s general fund. An additional 1 percent goes toward the office’s expenses. The office’s counsel, who for 23 years has been Gerard Sweeney, a private lawyer who mainly does the public administrator’s legal work, customarily gets a sliding legal fee that begins at 6 percent of the estate’s first $750,000.
“You can die in such anonymity in New York,” he likes to say. “We’ve had instances of people dead for months. No one finds them, no one misses them.”
Portable objects of value were to be retrieved. A Vermeer hangs on the wall? Grab it. Once they found $30,000 in cash, another time a Rolex wedged inside a radio. But the bar is not placed nearly that high: In one instance, they lugged back a picture of the deceased in a Knights of Malta outfit.
In the slanting light they scooped up papers from a table and some drawers in the living room. They found $241 in bills and $187.45 in coins. A silver Relic watch did not look special, but they took it in case.
The investigators returned twice more, rounding up more papers, another $95. They found no cellphone, no computer or credit cards.
Rummaging through the personal effects of the dead, sensing the misery in these rooms, can color your thoughts. The work changes people, and it has changed these men.
Mr. Rodriguez, has a greater sense of urgency. “I try to build a life like it’s the last day,” he said. “You never know when you will die. Before this, I went along like I would live forever.”
“This job teaches you a lot,” he said. “[B]You learn whatever material stuff you have you should use it and share it. Share yourself. People die with nobody to talk to. They die and relatives come out of the woodwork. ‘He was my uncle. He was my cousin. Give me what he had.’ Gimme, gimme. Yet when he was alive they never visited, never knew the person.[/B] From working in this office, my life changed.”
He said: “When I die, someone will find out the same day or the next day. Since I’ve worked here, my list of friends has gotten longer and longer. I don’t want to die alone.”[/QUOTE]
[t]http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/14/nyregion/18DYINGweb10/18DYINGweb10-superJumbo.jpg[/t]
[QUOTE]On Dec. 30, David R. Maltz & Company, in Central Islip, N.Y., auctioned off George Bell’s 2005 Toyota. Despite its age, the vehicle had just over 3,000 miles on it, brightening its appeal.[/QUOTE]
this is a great article, the snippet you posted doesn't bring it enough justice. anyone with some spare time I heavily recommend you read it.
That was a good read. Makes you wonder how you might end up someday down the road.
Some fine journalism right here. The detail he went into with what was discovered and the workings of what these people do was extremely interesting- if not a bit sad after all that. Makes you wonder how someone can simply withdraw as Bell did, what made him do that? Was it a psychological issue or, as his last friend says, did he simply get tired? It's a little bit of a scary thing to think about honestly. I can find solace in certain things in my life, namely faith, but what do people think and go through when such things as religion, family, friends or really any kind of legacy aren't available? I suppose his money was his legacy. That was lightening that the author went into what happened with his estate, how it was passed down even to people who themselves had died and had their own estates to be passed down.
Imagine how you get to this point. Somehow you made 16 million dollars, but you're completly forgotten, alone. Once long ago you probably had a family, a parent, perhaps both. Christmas dinners with the whole family, a room with a dinner table with 20 people sitting at it - members of your family. And now, decades later, somehow you're dying alone in an impoverished new york flat.
Really makes you think.
Wow, this is fascinating.
Really good article worth reading.
I hope I never die in a way that makes it really hard to understand who died. Reading this makes me feel that I need to stop sitting here and instead live my life and get friends that I talk with every day and meet often.
[QUOTE=proch;48936160]Imagine how you get to this point. Somehow you made 16 million dollars, but you're completly forgotten, alone. Once long ago you probably had a family, a parent, perhaps both. Christmas dinners with the whole family, a room with a dinner table with 20 people sitting at it - members of your family. And now, decades later, somehow you're dying alone in an impoverished new york flat.
Really makes you think.[/QUOTE]
That last chapter of the Uncle Scrooge comic telling his story comes to mind.
This was pretty amazing. I wasn't expecting the depth that the author went into.
I feel bad for this man, any one of us could have our lives take this spiral by the time we die.
This article reminds me of a documentary called "A Certain Kind of Death". It is on youtube and is about basically the same thing. It's a bit graphic though so NSFW.
This is an incredible article, definitely worth a read for anyone who has some time to spare.
Thanks OP for posting this. This is really interesting to know how the whole process works.
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