Today we helped another family in the Hunter valley. Another unattended death at home in quite an isolated area.

Max, in his late 70’s, had passed away on his kitchen floor. Sandra, his niece, had contected me.

It was over 3 weeks before her uncle Max was discovered and I felt this was one of the worst decompositions we have ever attended.

This family can now go into the home to sort personal photos, documents and contact friends for the funeral. Thankfully, they won’t need to deal with the horror of cleaning such a mess.

I discovered later, this elderly man has donated his estate to a well known charity which once saved his life.

Today I had a phone call from an elderly gentleman ‘John’, who lives on the north coast of NSW.

His younger brother, ‘Michael’ passed away in the bathroom of his unit who at the age of 72 and was not found for over a week. It was only when other residents in the unit block complained to strata management about the smell, that Michael was found. I wonder if unattended death in the elderly who are living alone is on the rise in our society?

Now John is full time career for his wife and lives over 6 hours drive north of Sydney. He called for Clean Queens for help.

In John’s own words, if he lived closer and was not full time career for his wife he would be “down in a flash” to clean up.

My eyes popped at that! I take my hat off to John for his will, but I couldn’t think of a more distressing thing in life to do. I’m sure John imagined a recognisable body laying there on tiles, a little blood, maybe a little fluid… trust me, it is nothing but!

Cleaning up the body-fluids of a sibling could only be a deeply distressing experience, assaulting all the senses (particularly smell) and I simply could not imagine John cleaning up the bathroom of his late brother on his own.

We attended to Michael’s unit, his neighbors were very helpful and a little upset over this incident. I spoke to John in the late afternoon with an update on completion.