When my cousin died of AIDS it was alone, as his parents had thrown him out a decade prior. It didn't matter, everyone said, as he was adopted, so not really part of the family. Well he was my family. My mother wouldn't even tell me what hospital he was dying in so I couldn't visit, even when it was three blocks from where I lived at the time.
After living on the streets in Puerto Rico with a bunch of others also kicked out for some years, he ended up with his biological mother in Yonkers, and took her surname. My ma wouldn't tell me that either, and forget about getting his phone number.
You see, we were close, like brothers, and seeing him dying might have turned me gay, right? So I was forbidden to contact him.
I gather this is how you prefer they be dealt with, cast out, to die alone. No pride, no love, nobody. I can't even imagine how he felt that I never visited him.
Three decades later, I still can't get over the guilt of not trying harder to contact him, although, of course, no matter what I did, it just was never going to happen.