Recent death:

1) A local seamstress who used to do work for my mother passed away, since she was (Jehovah's Witness) and needed heart-work but refused to have a blood transfusion, so they wouldn't operate on her at the university hospital where she had gone for a specialist evaluation.

"What a stupid death," my mother said, over the phone.

2) A major scholar whose work I know passed of Parkinson's, as did my one friend who used to deliver singing telegrams, who had ended up being moved out of assisted living and into a nursing home like one or two years ago because of falls, including one bad one where no-one found her for just hours and hours on end, as she lay on the floor after she had lost her balance.

She had been living at that nursing home with some (fat) woman who always watched television -- Medicare will only pay for double rooms, I believe -- and when I had called her around New Year's and couldn't understand her over the phone -- she's always been a low talker, and her (Southern) accent didn't help, but somehow it seemed physiological, this time -- so I told her that I couldn't understand her but I was glad to just chat on my end, and so I just had a one-sided conversation where I kept it light and told her what was up with me, and then when I called back a couple of months later her voice mailbox was full, and when I called a week after that, it was empty and I leave a message, only to have a text the next day from someone saying it was her sister and that she had finally succumbed to her battle with Parkinson's, and the date she mentioned was like the day after I had tried calling her and her voice mailbox was full. 

3) At the small local urban redevelopment in-fill mall, a small ethnic goods shop that was hanging on for several years for completion of a long-awaited hotel renovation and re-opening closed, about a month before that hotel finally did reopen.

(I hope the proprietor didn't lose too much money, on that. It would be sad if he did.)