In the late 1980s, I knew a very interesting man who was a few years older than me through a club we were both in (we were both in our 20s). I even asked him for a date; he declined, but IDR why. :o I wondered what ever became of him, and just plain old could not find him via Google. Last night, I thought of him again, and once again Googled him, only to find out that he died - in 1992 at the age of 31. I was able to find out what city he was living in at the time of his death, but no further information.
I went to a small private elementary and middle school, and then went on to a very large public high school. Felt very overwhelmed on my first day of freshman year, but there was this girl, a fellow freshman, who talked to me and made me feel better and hopeful in the midst of my big-school shock and awe. About a month ago I found out she died six years ago (at the age of 32) of alcohol poisoning. I gotta say, even though we were never best friends or anything, it was still a bit of a punch to the gut to hear this news.
If nothing else, it’s a reminder that youth is fleeting and death is always around the corner.
When I was little, two of my best friends lived with their mom above the only restaurant in town. Most summer days I could be found playing with them either in the field behind the restaurant or in their aunt & uncle’s yard. Some 30 years later, I found the girl on Facebook; still haven’t got up the nerve to ask about her brother.
I idly googled a friend who’d been a drummer in a band … he died years ago of a motorbike accident, really soon after we lost touch, I guess we didn’t lose touch after all.
I’ve had this happen so many times, I just assume Googling someone will bring up their obituary. It also seems to happen to me a lot during live conversations (best one - during a party, “hey, how’s your mom been!?” - “she died…in jail.” - cue awkward silence). So after several dead mothers and friends, I began to think somehow I was involved in the tragedies, so I quit asking.
It was a shock to hear that a girl I had the hots for in high school died on the operating table in her mid to late 30’s. Also that my neighbors son from when I was little died of a heart attack. He was only maybe 6-8 years older than me.
I’ve had quite a few of these moments (mostly) recently. Last year I moved back to the place where I grew up after being away for about 20 years. In my efforts to re-acquaint myself with old friends and what not, I’ve had a few sit-down dinners and happy hours with some of “the old gang”. I’d have to say that I was really surprised about how many had died over the years. And none of these were over 50 years old. Mostly just accidents and bad luck. Nobody had fatal diseases or genetic disorders - one died while rock climbing, one in a car wreck (not her fault), one just got sick and never recovered (I didn’t ask for details on that one as it came from a cousin of theirs).
Sort of makes me glad to be alive, despite all the crap that I’ve done in my life and situations I’ve put myself in where I might not have come out of if things went differently.
In August 2006, while in rehab for alcoholism/drug addiction I met and became romantically involved with another alcoholic. Even though Lisa quickly returned to drinking, she and I dated for about 4 months after our discharge. We lost contact with each other for several months, but reunited the following summer (July 2007) at the treatment facility’s Alumni Picnic. That would be the last time I saw or heard anything from her.
Two years later, (summer 2009) I began to wonder what ever happened to her. Google was no help because of her rather common name, so I searched for her in the database for her county court, and found that she’d died the year before, (August 2008) almost 2 years to the day that we’d first met!
Deeper searches for her mother and sister’s names turned up the details of Lisa’s death, but the gut-punch came in HOW she died. I’d fully expected hers to have been an “alcoholic’s death” (seizure, alcohol poisoning, car accident, etc) but it wasn’t…
…1 month shy of her 36th birthday, she choked to death eating her lunch at work.
One time my parents sent me the obituary page of their local newspaper that showed the obit for my third-grade teacher. By pure chance, on the same page was an obit for this girl I’d had a brief fling with some years before. She had been telling people that she wanted to have my baby (which is a big reason I ended it). And she was still relatively young when she died. It was definitely her, as there was a photo included. Didn’t say what she died from, but thinking about what I knew about her, I figured it must have been drugs or even Aids.
I posted about this a few years ago, but a while back I wanted to find a picture of a college meth teacher of mine and ended up finding out he had killed himself a month earlier.
Someone I went to school/CCD with died several years ago. Heart problems I assume (he had been a stockbroker, died b4 the crash, so it wasn’t suicide) Note from his college is in my “favorites” folder.
When I was 18 months old, mom put me in a Montessori pre-school. A slim little boy, not much bigger or older than me, took a fancy with me, and we became good friends for the next few years (you could call it puppy love?). Eventually, we both went to different schools, and although I heard of him through the grapevine, I didn’t see him again anymore.
Fast forward 25 years later, and I go back to the pre-school (I have fond memories of the place, and wanted to revisit them). After the teachers telling me what they know of my cohorts (yea, they remembered my friends and I), I finally ask about him. They admit that they don’t know either because he got involved with drugs and cut contact from his family. To that date, a couple of years ago, they didn’t know if he was dead, alive, sick, healthy, etc.
I once had a coworker who I worked with in four different companies. One of us would get a new job, then bring the other in. I considered him my best friend in those years. He had dropped out of school after 8th grade, yet was one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable people I’ve ever met. He was like a mental sponge, constantly soaking up knowledge in just about any area. I really loved the guy. But he lived very hard: was a heavy smoker, heavy drinker, etc., etc.
We totally lost touch with each other when I relocated back in 1995. A few years ago, I Googled his name, to discover that he had died of the effects of alcoholism. He was also a single parent, which I had known nothing about. He had once told me that if he ever turned out to be HIV-positive, he would just drink himself to death. I can’t help thinking that that’s what he did.
On a brief in-state vacation I met a homeless man, Viet Nam veteran, with a serious crack addiction. He told me his story while panhandling. In his fifties (Yes, he was a hardy dude.) he had had two strokes which had partially disabled him.
I told him that if he ever had serious thoughts about a recovery I would do what I could to help him. Told him that he would need to complete treatment first. Then I told him the name of my city and where the Salvation Army was located there. Gave him my phone number.
I expected that would be the last I ever heard of him. But I kept him in mind.
About six months later I was listening to the local radio and heard that a unidentified man had been found dead on the sidewalk near the Salvation Army shelter. And I thought it may be him. So I called the police.
Through some research I was able to piece together what he had done. He’d spent time in a recovery center getting sober and his physical health back and then he had entered treatment with the help of the Veteran’s program. Then he stayed for a short period of time somewhere in a small town in subsidized sober housing working a little job to save money and had arrived here.
He had been told his body wouldn’t be able to handle any more drugs or alcohol and he had stayed off the crack but gone with a group of new friends down to the railroad tracks to drink. On the way back he had a massive heart attack and died an addict’s death.
I wrote what I knew about him and drove to WI to give it to his family at his wake. They hadn’t heard from him in years and were grateful for my time.
At the wake they played Bob Dylan’s “Saving Grace.” It was the perfect song to send him off. Just the right amount of deference/independence.
When you know a lot of addicted people death becomes a common occurrence. And people come and go. . .
It’s entirely possible that she wasn’t entirely sober at the time, and that contributed to her choking.
I found out a while back that one of my college classmates died because he OD’d on stolen drugs. Looking back, I remember him making comments or asking questions during lectures that now makes me wonder if he because a pharmacist so he could have ready access to drugs.
My point in the OP was that I couldn’t locate someone on line, and it turned out they had died prior to the Internet taking off. But the fact that he had died so young was shocking to me too.
Around the same time, I worked with a woman in her 50s who left that job because she moved away to join a man with whom she’d been having a LDR. While I worked with her, she was treated for ovarian cancer, and was in remission when she moved away. I left that job in 1990 and moved to another city to finish my degree, and found her address while unpacking and wrote to her. I got a nice letter back from her updating me on what she was up to, but never heard from her again even though I sent her a Christmas card. It turned out that she too had died in the meantime, something I didn’t find out until years later when I got Internet access. I was never able to find an obituary for her (she had quite a chequered past WRT men, as did her adult daughter, and both had experienced stalking) and it’s always been in the back of my mind that her cancer came back and she killed herself. Hope I’m wrong.
Two guys I went to school with; one was a few years older than me but we were in the same school club. After he graduated he headed north and a few years later heard that he was working on the railways and ‘fell’ under a train.
The other was a good friend at school, lost contact for a few years and then met up again running an outdoors education group. He eventually took up a job in another state and some years later had a single car ‘accident’ one night. Heard about that a few weeks after his funeral.
I put ‘fell’ and ‘accident’ in quotes as it’s about 95% sure that both deaths were suicides after years of depression/after-effects of abuse. The first guy by his step-father and the second by a teacher at our school (who used to send him a Christmas Card each year.)
I had lost contact with my family, mostly on purpose. I wasn’t raised with them, so they were more like cousins than sibs.
My middle brother was in a car accident many years ago and was brain injured. A few months ago my youngest brother found me.
Apparently, my sister was the contact person for the group home where Mickey lived. They contacted her because he choked on food and no one at the home knew the heimlich maneuver.
It slipped her mind, she never told anyone else in the family. He was cremated and scattered. We don’t know by whom or where. She was supposed to give them her address to send his ashes, but that slipped her mind too.
My youngest brother found out 3 years after he died.
I was able to find out what city he was living in at the time of his death, but no further information.
