Obituary

Beloved Springfield Resident Jane Doe Dies at 82

Jane Doe, 82, of Springfield, has died in a house explosion that fire marshals are calling "the single most preventable act of self-immolation this department has responded to in over a decade." At 6:12 a.m., a neighbor sent a text reading "GAS LEAK, DO NOT LIGHT ANYTHING, EVAC NOW," a message that arrived, was delivered, and buzzed once against the nightstand before Jane Doe rolled back over and went to sleep.

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Fire investigators later recovered Jane Doe's phone from the wreckage with the alert still unread, sandwiched between a coworker's photo of their lunch and a reminder from a dentist's office. Friends describe Jane Doe as the kind of person who kept push notifications on for absolutely nothing, having disabled them for text messages specifically sometime around 2019 and never once looked back. "I texted them three times," said next-door neighbor and part-time gas company technician Denise Ruiz. "I even texted 'this is not a drill.' They just didn't check it. They never checked it."

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Jane Doe's last recorded action, per a neighbor's smart doorbell camera, was flipping on the stove to make coffee. The resulting explosion was felt four blocks away and rattled windows as far as the Springfield Municipal Building. Jane Doe is survived by family, several coworkers still waiting on a group-chat reply from March, and a phone that, remarkably, survived the blast with better structural integrity than the house. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that mourners simply text back.

Visitation

Eternal Rest Funeral Parlor

Visitation will be held Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m. The family has asked that guests call ahead with any questions rather than texting, on account of Jane Doe's well-documented habit of letting things sit unread, which the family would prefer not to repeat as a matter of tradition.