Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Time to take a break from reading obituaries

If there's anyone not already at "that age", at some point many/most people start reading the obituary section, "To see if I'm in there!"

Age, natural selection, bad luck all take a toll.

There are a number of people I knew in high school that I have lost track of, and have been curious about. Last week I saw an obituary for an older woman with the same last name as a "missing" friend. Indeed it was his mother, and, sadly, he was listed as having predeceased her.

His parents had been missionaries. He was in the journalism clique, although I knew him from band. He had convinced a local church to let him set up a weekend coffee house in the basement. I spent a lot of time there helping with this and that. It was there,after closing one night, that we got robbed at gunpoint. I had 4 quarters, which got dropped by the gunman, and I retrieved. But it went into the report and I got repaid a year or so later. The gunman was an AWOL airman from the local base. The gun, BTW, was a .22 pistol that looked like a shotgun to me! I met a lot of interesting people and had some very interesting experiences there.

We had hung around together a few years in high school, but by senior year he had lost interest in our friendship it seemed. The last time I saw him was immediately after our graduation ceremony when I called out to him. He waved and said "catch you later". I never saw or heard from or about him again.

I posted a message on Facebook asking if anyone had any info, and one classmate responded that he had killed himself in the early or mid 70's.

So sad

2 comments:

  1. I know the feeling. I found out through friends that a mutual friend who I'd been close with at one time was found dead in her apartment of a heart attack. She was 54 and alone. It took 48 hours before others decided to get her super and the police to open her apartment door. Very sad to die in such a state. I hadn't spoken to her in 10 years and now I guess I never will.

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  2. I read the obits sometimes. It is humbling, in a way, to read of so many who die and so many who loved them... whether accomplished or not-so-much, the ones that make the paper at least had someone who loved them and believed in them and took the time to make sure they were memorialized in some small way.

    I wonder what my obit will say?

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