"After A Short/Brief Illness"
 

This seems to be a popular phrase for reporting deaths these days. Not just celebs (although the use that spurred this question was a celeb death, the one before was someone local). The best I can come up with is "not an accident or cancer and that's all you need to know"

What do you interpret when you read this?

I've seen it used for people who had strokes and heart attacks which weren't immediately fatal but from which they didn't really recover, but also for people who I suspect ODd (whether intentional or not). It seems like it's a euphemism for something very specific but...

Or cancer discovered a few months, weeks, days before death. Cancer doesn't always let one linger longer, only to suffer.

I don't interpret it because it's none of my bidness. It's death, and it sucked. The end.

I take it to mean only that the deceased wasn't greatly suffering/struggling for long before the end, regardless of which illness caused their demise. I think it's meant to be a comforting statement.

Yeah, I assume/hope it means that too. it is a reassuring phrase, it's just something I've noticed being used more frequently recently

inf, how can you not wonder? I do understand it means it's not my business, but curiosity only killed the cat.

and probably not a pedigree one at that

I often interpret it to mean "something inconsequential that killed him because he was already old." You don't want to make people think there's a new plague of SARS going around, but you don't want to insult his memory by going on about how weak and feeble he was.

Shot in bed by a jealous husband...

tsk-tsk, lead poisoning

Should have at least been the Good-Humor man. ;)

I've always wondered if it's used in non-celeb cases to comfort people who knew the deceased on a friends basis. Like they may have seen them in town only a few weeks before and see the obituary and think, "Why didn't I ask how they were? If only I'd known they were ill!"

Mum used the phrase when Auntie Alice died. I was pleased she did, because it was the only way some people who knew her heard of her death. She had a stroke - not her first - and died in hospital shortly afterwards. She wasn't in great health at the time, but some of the people who came up to me at the funeral didn't even know that. They remembered her more as the strong vibrant woman she'd been for years, looking after the elderly, going to whist and bridge, shopping for poorly neighbours. She made such an impression on them in this phase of her life that they failed to notice when she slowed down and then disappeared off the radar. They honestly believed she'd been organising trips to the seaside for OAPs right up until the obituary appeared.

Just my take on it.

Oh, you're right. I often am curious. I was just in a bad place last night. And by bad place I don't mean my home, or any physical location.

Sometimes you can get a clue from the obit, where they say "in lieu of flowers please donate to..." then it's Hospice or the American Heart Association.

I think it's meant as you said, a reassuring phrase, that the person didn't suffer (for very long anyway.)

The cynic in me always thinks of it as a comforting lie. The only people I know who had swift deaths made mistakes at the wheel everybody else suffers one way or another.

I think I'd rather drop dead between one step and the next.

Griff, in my fairly sheltered life I've known three people who've literally dropped down dead.
Not after a short illness it's true because it was an unknown health problem. And I agree it was nowhere near painless for those left behind.

But swift? FSM yes. Dead before they hit the ground. Oh, make that four if you include the husband of someone I worked with. Never met him but he was 47, which seemed reasonably old to me at the time.

Aside from that I knew one person killed in an RTA. At 17 and a passenger; the deceased driver was not judged to be at fault. All our ages were similar - she & me, her brother and mine, her Mum and mine. All now dead. Definitely a knock-on effect in their case as she was the lynchpin, hope and life of their little family.

That's not saying you're wrong. I'm just expressing my experience because it differs from yours.

I'm glad you've seen that Sundae. I try to be cool with a different view and in this case its very welcome. I always figure I'll go down ugly, but maybe my heart will blowup at just the right moment. :)