an interesting dilemma

I knew I could count on you joe.

anyway, Suppose this family went to the US Post Office and demanded that they retrieve all the letters their son had mailed to other people. Think that would fly?

Personal integrity, to me, means being honest and totally forthright.

If my son were to go to Iraq, as he plans, and the unthinkable were to happen, I think I'd want to know what he'd written. He is a beautiful writer and I'd want to collect all his last little bits and put them in a safe, loving place. They'd be collected with a lot of family writings that have gone before, but I will ask him.**

We don't use yahoo except when traveling.

Re: the P.O., if a letter were to come back or more mail arrive for him, should that be opened? If there were a paper file in his office, would that be tossed away, unread?

**
I asked him. He said, "Lame. He should have been using his dot.mil account."

The both said that the dot.mil accounts will give the account to the next-of-kin.

My daughter said, "It's Yahoo's fault. There's no place to show that you want your parents' to have access in the event of your death."

To which I said, he could have given his password, and she replied:

"They need to get a hacker and he'll have it open in 5 minutes."

That's the word of the 20 and 21 year-olds in my house.

Ask your kids to give you their passwords, piffka.




I don't think families have rights to any of these things. Don't open their mail, stay out of their email, don't listen to their phone calls. Privacy. It's a form of respect.

Just re-read the beginning, and the title. I don't see it as a dilemna. No-brainer to me. Private 'stuff' is private 'stuff'.

Beth -- We're talking about dealing with the effects of someone who is dead. Dead and gone. That is a lot different from snooping on someone who is alive.

I have buried four different family members and I know that it is standard practice to deal with the clean-up that happens afterwards. You get their mail, pay their bills, deal with the phone calls and go through their things. If you love the person who died, you may also try to keep a little store-house of memorabilia. It is quite common to include whatever letters they wrote. That is also a form of respect.

We keep a large collection of family papers and effects, going back more than a hundred years and six or more generations. Prior to the internet, people wrote letters... saved letters ... and those were some of the most important ways for their heirs to know who they were.

All of us will die someday and all of our effects will be gone through by someone. Your privacy can't be respected -- you'll be lucky if whoever goes through your stuff loves you. If you want to have some things kept private, I advise you to start burning things now.