I had an interesting conversation a couple of weeks ago with a neighbour in her mid-sixties - let’s call her Sandra - whose mother lives in a retirement village.  “Oh, have I got a story for you,” she told me when we caught up in the dog park after the New Year.

The story concerned the very unfortunate circumstances around the death of a resident in her mother’s retirement village, which went undetected for several days.  The resident in question was a quiet man in his seventies who lived alone in his unit and was a volunteer for a well-known care-related service at night. Let’s call him ‘Jim’.

In the view of his fellow residents in the village, Jim was “a pleasant enough fellow who mostly kept to himself”.  He wasn’t very social and didn’t invite friendships.

So when Jim had a fatal heart attack, it took a while for anyone to notice.  In fact it took five days before he was finally discovered.

There is guilt, regret, outrage, shame. And who is to blame? An event that got the tongues wagging prompts a lot more careful thought about the way we look out out for one another and what amount of privacy we might be prepared to trade for a sense of security and connection.

Read more here - http://frankandearnest.net.au/a-death-in-the-village/.