athornton: Angry.  Drunken.  BOFH. (Default)
athornton ([personal profile] athornton) wrote2020-12-15 11:27 am
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Misaddressed email in the age of COVID-19

You may know the XKCD comic https://xkcd.com/1279/ "Reverse Identity Theft".

That's me.  I get dozens of misaddressed emails a day.  Most of them are harmless: there's some guy in England who really likes sports bikes and spends a lot of money on them.  Someone keeps buying gas and I get her receipts.

Occasionally there has been family drama that I have been inadvertently witness to.

But today.  Oh boy.

I got an email with a form that the recipient was to sign and return ASAP.  It was a form someone's daughter was signing on behalf of her mother, to move her to palliative hospice care.  The daughter had to sign because the mother was unresponsive.

I wrote back and strongly suggested they find another means of contact so they could find the daughter's actual email address.

This has torn me up emotionally, way more than I expected.  I'm sure most of it is my anxiety about my parents and COVID-19.

Tell your loved ones that you love them.