Snooping into someone else's life?

I don’t done generally think this is a good thing to do, yet I am interested in finding out more about a high-school classmate and short-term college roommate who died last year. I would like to know what happened.

This was a former good friend of mine who I had drifted away from. We roomed for a year in college until I went somewhere else for school, yet we continued to hang out and went to many concerts together and many parties and played tennis and played on softball teams together. Then I got married and had kids and he didn’t, and we drifted apart, and at some point I wanted to avoid him because the friendship felt difficult to support.

He was a very heavy drinker. I remember we went to a George Thorogood concert and we hit the john right before it started. There was a line and we heard the band come out and start playing, and my friend, reluctant to wait in the line once the music started, was so drunk he walked up to a sink and unzipped and peed into it. That kind of drunk.

Still, a good friend back in the day and I remember him in left field making a magnificent outstretcheched diving catch to save a softball game in the last inning in a meaningless adult softball league, a catch as good as I’ve seen on ESPN. We all cheered and rushed the field to congratulate.

So we drifted apart and recently my GF mentioned something about him, asked his name since she didn’t remember, and when I told her she googled him and after a pause said, “I think he may have died.” So I then googled and saw that yes, he was gone.

So here’s the thing about him. His older brother, who he revered and who was a world-class blues harmonica player who had played with one of the old-time blues legends (Jimmy Rogers) in a European tour, had died young a few years before him. Both his parents were dead. He was married very briefly with no children. He could be a melancholy sort. I worry that he felt very alone and I hope that didn’t contribute to his death at the age of 58.

Googling him returns next to nothing other than a brief funeral notation mentioning it was a private burial. He has an elderly uncle still alive, and the uncle has a Facebook account with all of three followers. I messaged the uncle with my condolences but got no reply.

Anyone know a way to find out a bit more about what happened to him? I’ve been thinking about him off and on since I realized he was gone. That’s probably a product of the mystery about it, my fear that his lonliness may have contributed, and my own advancing age and thoughts of mortality.

I would try the funeral organization or church. In my limited experience in a similar situation (former business partner, reclusive, kept cancer to himself), they were very willing to pass my information on to someone who was receptive to the inquiry. It seems like the best chance. And I don’t think it is not snooping if it’s an overt inquiry, but there’s nothing wrong with researching what’s happened to someone either.

Are you prepared to live with the fact you may not like the answers you get?

I may do that.

Of course. He was only 58 when he died. His brother died at 54. His father died a year before him.

The following isn’t illegal in any way, but it’s certainly more than a simple google search and therefore may feel a little off; depending on your state, public records may reveal more about the cause of death if that’s your goal, but such records can be spartan and honestly not always the most accurate (if there’s a question of suicide vs. accident, for instance, people will lean toward accident because of life insurance reasons). They’d also potentially turn up property and businesses he owned (via tax assessor websites, for instance), marriages & divorces, and court activity (clerk of courts websites) if you’re wanting to snoop a bit on that stuff.

In the end, however, reaching out to those who knew him is always best and I think cornchip’s idea is great; any organization he was affiliated with will likely have more leads. If you’re nearby, you could maybe contact neighbors but that’s hit or miss - my neighbors know next to nothing about me, for instance.

I had a similar experience a few years ago. I got curious about one of my best high school friends and what he was up to. At our 10th year HS reunion, someone had mentioned he was living in Hawaii but didn’t get to the reunion.

Anyway, I did some googling and his name is so very unique, I wasn’t getting any hits anywhere - and finally decided to try his name + obituary and saw he had died many years ago, (1997) when he was 33. No details on the death - but it was in Hawaii.

It bothered me because we didn’t keep in touch and he was a bit of strange fellow but I always enjoyed his company.

I thought about trying to find his parents, but it had been so long since his death (almost 20 years), I just let it lie.

This worked for me recently as well. I’m the administrator for my company’s 401k and I was trying to force out a 401k balance that had been left and forgotten about for an employee who was terminated in the 90s. Quick googling determined that he was recently deceased. There was no beneficiary information - no luck with forwarding addresses or contact information. The balance wasn’t much, but it didn’t feel right to forfeit the funds.

He had no immediate surviving family members per the obituary and those names listed were fairly generic. Suddenly it hit me that maybe I could reach out to the funeral home to contact legal heirs and they were more than happy to contact the family on my behalf. Received a call from his granddaughter within a few hours and we sorted everything out. I figure that funeral homes field these kind of calls all the time.

That makes sense. When the contacted party sees there’s some kind of benefit to giving out the info, they probably will. I don’t know if my inquiry would fit that, but it’s worth a try I suppose. Thanks to all.