Forgotten.

Hello, friends. This weekend has gone by entirely too quickly. I had so many things on my 'to-do' list that simply didn't get done. My friend Brittnee is taking a class on film making and I'm living vicariously through her. We spent last evening watching a few gems from my Alfred Hitchcock collection and only took a small break to run to the grocery store and get more snacks. I planned on getting my errands done today but I have yet to get off of the couch.

I thought, for a moment, that I was ready to get up and be productive but then I started down the cycle that is the deep, dark, endless time sucker: Netflix.

Have you ever heard of Joyce Carol Vincent?

I was looking through the documentaries and I came across a documentary on her life. If you've never heard of her, I'll give you a short summary of why she is famous; she perished in her apartment in 2003 while watching television in her London Flat. Inexplicably....nobody discovered that she was dead until THREE YEARS LATER when her skeleton was discovered....still sitting on the couch with her television on the last channel she ever watched.

I'm sorry...what?

I read the description and was obviously horrified. I had to watch it so I hit play. I was heartsick with the expectation of some poor old woman who was so elderly and alone that nobody had noticed that she'd died of old age in some Grey Gardens-esque situation. Which would be tragic enough I can't take learning about the elderly in tragic situations...it just makes me ridiculously depressed. But Joyce Vincent was not a helpless old woman. She was 40, gorgeous and a singer. They didn't find her among stacks of newspapers and cat poop....they found her surrounded by half wrapped Christmas presents.

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I mean, what the heck man? Not that it would be any less sad if it was an isolated, elderly woman, it's just a lot more confusing. She was wrapping presents for people....wasn't anyone wrapping presents for her? Nobody noticed when this person who they must have seen on a regular basis vanished? This is very unsettling. I know every person alive has had moments where they think "would anyone care if I was gone?" and we all answer ourselves with "Yes, someone must. I interact with people every day". Did she have those moments? She had FOUR SISTERS who she was in contact with. They couldn't even tell how she died because all that was left were her bones. She seemingly ceased living, for no reason at all, watching BBC1 and wrapping Christmas presents for friends and family who clearly didn't miss them or her. 

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Poor lady. Wasn't she beautiful? I know it's morbid to blog about this but...I think it's kind of poetic that her story is shared so publicly when she spent three years, entombed in her apartment with nobody questioning where she was or if she was alright. Now, attention is being payed to her sad end. 

If you want to watch the documentary, it's called Dreams of a Life. Be prepared though, it's not pleasant.