This is the strangest and saddest story...makes you really think about how important or unimportant you are in the lives of others. Has anyone heard about this? Certainly lots of questions are swirling around in my mind...some of it makes no sense at all.

Joyce Vincent was 41 when she was found dead in her home, but she was 38 when she died. For three years, from 2003-2006, her body lay surrounded by Christmas gifts she was planning to wrap; the television still on.

How does this happen? Especially to a woman who was social, who two-years prior had a high-powered job at Ernst and Young, who had rubbed elbows with celebrities, and who wanted to get married? That’s what Carol Morley set to find out. But her new documentary film, “Dreams of a Life,” is about more than just Joyce Vincent, a young, beautiful London woman whose parents were from the Caribbean and who no one seemed to miss when she was gone. It’s about life, death, and loneliness.

To promote the film, the studio Hide & Seek, created a companion website called Dreams of Your Life to engage visitors to examine their own isolation with questions like, “Could something like that ever happen to me?” “Do you have friends?” “If you died, how long would it take for someone to find you?”

The questions are eerily introspective.“Our aim was to make something that would give people a chance to think about the people in their lives and think about whether or not there were any changes that they wanted to make about their degree of connectedness,” Hide & Seek’s Margaret Robertson said.

As for Joyce Vincent, her memory will live on in Morley’s film which debuted at the BFI London Film Festival in October and was shortlisted for best documentary there. You can also read more about her story here.

The film will be available for general release in March. Watch this clip and tell us what you think? Honestly, the way the trailer stuck with me, I don’t think I’d ever be able to get this movie out of my head.

http://madamenoire.com/11...5.facebook

More about her...this is only part of the article. How is this possible??

http://www.guardian.co.uk...ocumentary

Joyce Vincent, who died alone in a bedsit.

On 25 January 2006, officials from a north London housing association repossessing a bedsit in Wood Green owing to rent arrears made a grim discovery. Lying on the sofa was the skeleton of a 38-year-old woman who had been dead for almost three years. In a corner of the room the television set was still on, tuned to BBC1, and a small pile of unopened Christmas presents lay on the floor. Washing up was heaped in the kitchen sink and a mountain of post lay behind the front door. Food in the refrigerator was marked with 2003 expiry dates. The dead woman's body was so badly decomposed it could only be identified by comparing dental records with an old holiday photograph of her smiling. Her name was revealed to be Joyce Carol Vincent.

I first heard about Joyce when I picked up a discarded copy of the Sun on a London underground train. The paper reported the gothic circumstances of her death – "Woman dead in flat for three years: skeleton of Joyce found on sofa with telly still on" – but revealed almost nothing about her life. There was not even a photograph of her.

The image of the television flickering over her decomposing body haunted me as I got off the train on to the crowded platform. In a city such as London, home to 8 million people, how could someone's absence go unnoticed for so long? Who was Joyce Vincent? What was she like? How could she have been forgotten?

News of Joyce's death quickly made it into the global media, which registered shock at the lack of community spirit in the UK. The story ran on in the British press, but still no photograph of Joyce appeared and little personal information.

Soon Joyce dropped out of the news. I watched as people discussed her in internet chatrooms, wondering if she was an urban myth, or talking about her as though she never mattered, calling her a couch potato, and posting comments such as: "What's really sad is no one noticed she was missing – must have been one miserable bitch." And then even that kind of commentary vanished.

But I couldn't let go. I didn't want her to be forgotten. I decided I must make a film about her.

At this point all that had been revealed in the press was that Joyce Vincent was 38 when she died, had been born in west London to parents who were from the Caribbean, and that some of her family had attended her inquest. Some reports suggested Joyce was, or had been, engaged to be married, and that before living in the bedsit she had been in a refuge for victims of domestic violence. But she didn't fit the typical profile of someone who might die and be forgotten: she wasn't old without family; she wasn't a loner, or an overdosed drug addict; nor was she an isolated heavy drinker. Who she was and the circumstances of her death were a mystery.

I placed adverts with various publications and internet sites. On a poster on the side of a black cab I asked: Did you know Joyce Vincent? Meanwhile, as I waited for any response, I contacted people who were involved with bringing Joyce's story to light.

thats really sad....

errant said:

In all reality, some people just aren't that memorable, interesting, or likeable to ring up to find out whether or not they are dead or alive. I'm certainly not. What's so surprising that she wouldn't be. I'm not reading anything here that would make me want to check on her.

Damn...how about just because she's a human being?

noimageatall said:

wow, that is really sad like I said.. but why didnt anyone care?

IamFunkay7 said:

wow, that is really sad like I said.. but why didnt anyone care?

Because some humans suck...as is evident in this thread.

noimageatall said:

it's shocking stuff but not uncommon. there was someone in my town who wasn't missed until he started dripping through his neighbours ceiling! what i can't understand with this young woman is she must have racked up a huge fuel bill & had nobody on her back about it? usually after one reminder they sending round the baliffs

my house is like a fking outreach centre anyway!! i couldn't die easily without being missed

I guarantee this shit happens all the time.

I read this story in the Toronto Star not that long ago. I was shocked that anyone could be dead for that long and no one would notice. I'm having a hard time understanding this seeing as she was once fairly successful and had some friends. What about the bills she owed like rent, taxes etc?

It's very sad, but shit like this happens more than we know.

[EDIT]

[Edited 12/16/11 7:20am]

this kind of stuff happens to elderly people all the time. But, 3 years???? No family, friends, associates or co-workers tried to find out what happened to this woman? I don't care how disliked you are, everyone has at least ONE person who likes them (I would hope). Did she have any neighbors? They didn't smell anything? Was she paying rent? If she hadn't paid rent in 3 years, wouldn't someone come to evict her? I think this just goes to prove that too many people are so self-centered and self-absorbed in their own lives, that they really don't give a damn about other people (unless it's benefitting them).

I wish I could remember the name of the documentary I saw about people whose job it is to track down the life story of dead people who have no familiy or friends to give their fortunes to.

It was really, really, REALLY odd to me all the stories they had in the documentary. Some people are completely invisible.

I think I'm alot llike Joyce, honestly.

I have a lot of friends, but none are terribly close.

I rarely ever see my familiy (just sister and mom), and my sister never calls. She visited me a few weeks ago, but we hadn't really spoken regularly in 2 years, even though we consider each other to be pretty close.

I doubt it would take 3 years in my case, but I could see folks not noticing after a couple of months.

It doesn't sadden me. I don't get the need to be missed and such.

.

[Edited 12/16/11 7:27am]

Empress said:

I read this story in the Toronto Star not that long ago. I was shocked that anyone could be dead for that long and no one would notice. I'm having a hard time understanding this seeing as she was once fairly successful and had some friends. What about the bills she owed like rent, taxes etc?

It's very sad, but shit like this happens more than we know.

If you have the monies in the bank or have a large overdraft and pay by Direct Debit then bills will be payed automaticaly, maybe this is another reason why no one noticed sooner

I agree that it's a sad commentary on just much we've lost the "community" factor in our society.

No one looks out for their neighbors anymore. Hell we barely TALK to our neighbors, let alone want to be in their "lives" in any sense.

I'm interested in watching this documentary.

I'm also interested how she could have electricity & other utilities for 3 years without paying (unless she had alot of money in the bank + direct withdrawals?)...

...also...didn't ANYONE notice the SMELL?!?!?!

BklynBabe said:

It took that long for rent arrears AND she still had electricity??? maybe broke people need to move to London....

i know that's right....

It said in an article that she was living in a "bedsit" (rooming house) that was subsidized, so it makes perfect sense that it could go into arrears for an extended period of time.

There was a similar story recently of a woman this happened to in Florida. The person who purchased her foreclosed house found her in her car in the garage years after she had died. They were able to trace back to the last mortgage payment she made to know around when she died. The crazy thing was, the bank had had the house, including the garage, inspected 2 times before it was sold.

I believe she had 2 ex husbands and family (a brother and nieces and nephews) in another state as well. She was a victim of mental illness and was missing the right health care.

Something like that could happen to any of us. It’s really heartbreaking to me.

Found the story. It really is heartbeaking.

http://www.tampabay.com/n...me/1181888

This is really sad...but I do agree with Errant in that, this woman, for all we know, could have been a really unpleasant person to be around when she was alive.

Pure speculation ofcourse, but it kinda raises those questions for an incident like this. I mean, 3 years...without a family member, friend, work associate or neighbor thinking to themselves, 'hmmm Joyce, we haven't heard from her in a while, I wonder how she is'?

Damn! Truly is a sad story and circumstance.

I can't help but think many of the things already mentioned on this thread. How did no one notice the smell? What about her rent and bill etc.?

In the end though, this isn't new and happens all the time. To me, that is what's truly sad. People go missing all the time. In some cases no one even knows that the person is missing.

This seems so weird for a young person especially one who's outgoing. The mail pile up alone you would think should have alerted the mail carrier after a few weeks at least. Absolutely sad no family called even once a year to say happy birthday, or even complain about why she hadn't called them. I think I ought to give a gift packet to all my noisy azz neighbors, cause ain't no way they wouldn't come pokin' around eventually.

Pr1nceQuik said:

This is really sad...but I do agree with Errant in that, this woman, for all we know, could have been a really unpleasant person to be around when she was alive.

Pure speculation ofcourse, but it kinda raises those questions for an incident like this. I mean, 3 years...without a family member, friend, work associate or neighbor thinking to themselves, 'hmmm Joyce, we haven't heard from her in a while, I wonder how she is'?

Damn! Truly is a sad story and circumstance.

Did you watch the trailer ? cause that's not what the people who knew her are saying about her

Here's a portion of the interview abou her

LF: As you started to learn more about Joyce what were you most surprised about with regards to her life?

CM: That she was so popular and people said that she never argued. I found that quite a surprising detail at first, this idea that she’d never raise her voice and was really polite and reasonable with people. She presented herself so immaculately and all these details gave others, to an extent, the impression that she was alright a lot of the time. Almost everything surprised me as I went along. That she wanted to be a singer and her mother died when she was 11 and that was the age when my dad had died. And that we used to live on the same street in London, at different times. There were things like that surprised me because they made her closer to me.

http://www.lovefilm.com/i...-of-a-Life

[Edited 12/16/11 12:13pm]