Junk Mail in Retirement: The Mystery of Mail for the Living—and the Deceased

Today I received a magazine with a warning splashed across the front:

“This is your last issue. Hurry—Subscribe Now!”

Actually, it’s the third issue with that notice, so I’m not entirely convinced it’s my last.

There’s another small detail. The magazine is addressed to the previous tenant of our apartment…who died a year ago.

But that’s not the record for receiving dead people’s mail.

For years we wintered in an RV park where all the mail went to a central office and was distributed to each lot. One of the residents with the same last name as ours died, and the mailroom staff began throwing away his mail.

Four years later, we moved and submitted a change of address. Lo and behold—mail for that deceased RV park resident started arriving at our new home.

We’d write “NOT AT THIS ADDRESS — DECEASED” on the envelopes and send them back to the post office. For official mail—say from the IRS or a financial advisor—we’d carefully note deceased and return it to the sender.

Created by ChatGPT 3/7/26

You’d think the financial advisor might already know his client had died.

And the IRS? Well, you’d think they would know everything.

It’s too bad we never received any checks. After a year of forwarding the mail back with “THIS GUY DIED IN 2016” written in red across the envelope, we felt we were entitled to some kind of small administrative stipend.

Which raises a question: Is there a statute of limitations on misaddressed mail? After five years can you legally open it and claim whatever’s inside? On second thought, I’d better not. Instead of refund checks, it could easily be bills or tax arrears notices.

For a while after we moved to Naples, I still received spring bulb and seed catalogs from northern companies—even though bulbs don’t really work in Florida. At first I secretly loved those catalogs. I’d sit and admire the pictures of the daffodils and tulips I used to plant each fall, then wait all winter to see them pop up in the spring. I’d turn the pages and imagine my old garden bursting into bloom.

Daffodils from my garden

Sometimes I wondered if the new residents kept the bulbs or dug them up. A friend of mine once planted a Royal Poinciana tree and nurtured it for 25 years. When she moved, the new owner cut it down. She was devastated. She said, "It felt like losing a child."

After a couple of years, though, the catalogs made me sad. I stopped paging through them, tossed them into the recycling bin, and notified the companies that we could no longer use their products.

The charities followed the same pattern. It seemed a little odd to keep donating to Chicago food banks when we now live in Florida and could support local ones instead.

You’d think the computer systems would notice that we’d moved, hadn’t donated in years, and perhaps stop mailing us.

After all, tens of thousands of people move from Illinois to Florida every year. That’s a lot of catalogs and brochures heading south unnecessarily.

But the real mystery is the mail we receive now.

We live in a Continuing Care Retirement Community—an apartment building. Yet we regularly get advertisements for roofers, HVAC systems, and window replacement.

And, believe it or not…other CCRCs. I wonder if those communities realize the thousand residents here have already committed to one.

Curious, to see if these companies couldn’t exclude us from their mailings,  I looked it up.

Businesses using bulk mail can absolutely exclude specific communities, including CCRCs, by using targeted mailing lists. In other words, they could stop sending us this stuff.

Some of the mail is tempting, though. Many retirement communities and financial advisors offer free lunches in nice restaurants if you’ll sit through a presentation.

Crematory services offer them too. I might be interested in the topic someday, but discussing cremation over chicken piccata feels a little…creepy.

Like me, many residents here say, “When I pick up the mail, I just turn around and dump it straight into the recycling bin.”

Frankly, the community could make that even easier for us seniors by installing a recycling slot right next to the mailboxes. After all, we could trip and fall if we turn around too quickly while our arms are full of junk mail.

Created by ChatGPT 3/7/26

The most amazing things are the giant catalogs. We recently received one from a luxury home furnishings company. It was so heavy I actually weighed it: almost three pounds. I could barely hold it with my frail wrists.

The entire catalog is printed in tasteful sepia tones. Each two-page spread features a single item. There was a sofa. Price: $8,500. My entire apartment's furniture didn’t cost that much.

Still, some people here enjoy getting junk mail.“It’s the only mail we get besides bills,” one resident told me.

These days even the IRS rarely sends letters anymore.

So if the junk mail stopped, some of us might open our mailboxes and find…nothing at all.

Except one lonely magazine announcing: “This is your last issue.”

For the third time.