[e40]

This is why my mother sends me an email every morning. Sometimes she just says hey, but most other times she includes other info about her life or asks me questions. Her reasoning was that because she had a cat (at the time), she didn't want to become cat food should she died suddenly.

[rokhayakebe]

Off Topic:

This is why my mother sends me an email every morning.

Should be the other way around. Parents watched us every hour when growing up, as adults we should be the ones checking on them constantly.

In the West I rarely hear people who talk about their parents with great love and care. Instead I see parents praising their children all day long. These kids grow up feeling like a prize and they do not develop enough appreciation for the hard work it took their parents.

Growing up in Africa it felt like, as a child, you owed everything to your parents and they did you a favor taking care of you. While extreme, in the long run people take care of their parents and you will not hear of older people being alone let alone die alone.

[DoreenMichele]

It doesn't really matter if mom initiates the email exchange or child does. The important detail is daily communication from the elderly parent confirming they are alive and functional. If child sends email, the elderly parent still needs to reply or you have no mechanism to check if they are okay.

[coldtea]

The point was not about the mechanism, but caring.

[icebraining]

in the long run people take care of their parents and you will not hear of older people being alone let alone die alone.

You are assuming these people have children at all - that's becoming less true every year.

Also, you should consider that people sometimes prefer to be alone. My grandmother now lives with my mother, but that was only after she fell at home at 85 years old, because before she preferred to live by herself. Had she died in that fall, she would have died alone too, but not because her children didn't want to take care of her.

[mattashii]

Though my opinion may be extreme, I only think of family as a group of people/dear friends who I've grown up around, and parents as caretakers. Yes, I do own them for taking care of me (which I know was a pain), but they are also the ones who chose to do so, without my consent. Should I be grateful to people who force their values on me? I think not. At least, not so much as for them to completely rely on me when they're unfit for society.

[daredevil_kohai]

I don't know reading this comments make me feel offended. I guess that's a problem with myself. But I can't help thinking if our parents didn't take care of us without our consent and waited for getting consent from us about whether we should be taken care of or not, would we be there to give them or not to give them consent?

[hbt]

in the West, children are delegated to third parties (often strangers, not family)

Several government programs act as a poor substitute for family support.

Lack of incentive, lack of community and an emphasis on individualism creates people like that.

[eric_h]

> she didn't want to become cat food should she died suddenly.

I had a great-great aunt who lived alone and hoarded cats and dogs (and many other non-living things). She was partially eaten when they finally found her. My grandparents eventually moved in to that property, and now my parents have it as a second property.

Every time I visit, I still get a little shudder when I think about what it must have been like to stumble upon that scene (a weeks dead, partially eaten corpse surrounded by dozens of hungry cats and dogs...) - I'm not sure which neighbor discovered her, but that poor person...

[Edit: fortunately, my parents didn't tell me the story until I was 18, I had visited my grandparents at that property every summer for most of my childhood. I imagine if they had told me earlier, my trips to the basement of that 19th century house would have been a bit more frightening]

[wil421]

I’ve heard similar stories and seen it mentioned on cop show. It must be pretty common.

What about a device like the emergency buttons for elderly but it checks vitals? It could update loved ones daily. I bet you could use an Apple Watch.

[eric_h]

I really hope I don’t have to worry about it for another 10-20 years