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Two dead friends...

woodsman

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Has anyone ever got the urge to contact an old friend to discover they died. This is the second time in as many months this has happened to me. The first was two months ago, an old friend had been on my mind so I tried to contact him. At first I had little success all phones were disconnected and emails returned. I finally got his wife on the phone and was told the news he past six months ago, I wish I knew at the time. With talking with others I guess no one was informed, the wife just put him in the ground and their isn’t even a marker.

The second friend I just discovered today, he and I usually connected around the xmas holiday but this year went silent. He was always very hard to contact, he moved to Brazil and shipped out as a merchant marine six months out of the year. He owns a house about a thirty minute drive from me that he has rented out for years. It was his goal to move back to the US with his Brazilian wife and two kids. What alerted me to something wrong was that the rental property is overgrown and looks abandoned. At one time I helped him manage this rental property but it got to be to much so I suggested a property management outfit that would handle all.

Again all phones disconnected and emails returned, this time I had no way of contacting his wife, I knew her name but Brazil is a big place. My last resort which maybe should have been the first was the internet. On the first search I found out what happened to him. A drunk driver out on bail for a previous DUI ran him down while he was riding a bicycle outside the Brunswick, Georgia port as the ship he worked as the chief engineer was unloading. Lesson learned for me, keep closer contact with your friends regardless of distance and time apart.
 
Sucks when that happens. When I first got back to Tucson I ran into a guy I used to run with who informed me that another mutual friend had died in a parachuting accident. Another guy, based on what I was told, had fallen out of a moving car. I suspect that there is more to the latter story but, truth be told, I wasn't entirely surprised.
 
Has anyone ever got the urge to contact an old friend to discover they died. This is the second time in as many months this has happened to me. The first was two months ago, an old friend had been on my mind so I tried to contact him. At first I had little success all phones were disconnected and emails returned. I finally got his wife on the phone and was told the news he past six months ago, I wish I knew at the time. With talking with others I guess no one was informed, the wife just put him in the ground and their isn’t even a marker.

The second friend I just discovered today, he and I usually connected around the xmas holiday but this year went silent. He was always very hard to contact, he moved to Brazil and shipped out as a merchant marine six months out of the year. He owns a house about a thirty minute drive from me that he has rented out for years. It was his goal to move back to the US with his Brazilian wife and two kids. What alerted me to something wrong was that the rental property is overgrown and looks abandoned. At one time I helped him manage this rental property but it got to be to much so I suggested a property management outfit that would handle all.

Again all phones disconnected and emails returned, this time I had no way of contacting his wife, I knew her name but Brazil is a big place. My last resort which maybe should have been the first was the internet. On the first search I found out what happened to him. A drunk driver out on bail for a previous DUI ran him down while he was riding a bicycle outside the Brunswick, Georgia port as the ship he worked as the chief engineer was unloading. Lesson learned for me, keep closer contact with your friends regardless of distance and time apart.

Not quite like you describe, but I have found out about several friends who died while looking for them on the internet. The first time it happened, I was stunned to see their name on an obit website. Another showed up in a criminal appeals court decision; he had committed a very serious crime. After a few years, I became numb to the bad news as more and more people showed up on those lists.

It's not all bad news though. One friend from HS that I looked up turned out to now be a highly successful entrepreneur. He owns a $20M per year sporting goods import/export company and lives near Tiger Woods. Another opened up a very successful restaurant in the Chicago area. But, most are just reasonably successful professionals getting through life and doing fine, a bit like me.
 
I have managed to find most of my old school friends online over the years. There are just a few left that haven't left much of an online presence. A few months ago I decided to try and find me my first girlfriend again. I hadn't seen her since we were 13 and I am in my 40s. So it has been awhile. But I think of her every now and then. She was my first real kiss and she even let me feel her boob once. Outside of the shirt, of course. Hey, I was 13. That was a big deal. :) I really thought I was in love with her at the time. Then we moved away.

So I decided to try and find her again. After about an hour of Google-fu I came across an obituary of a woman by the same name, same age, and same area. Now, her name was fairly common and it was Houston so it wasn't necessarily her. But the obituary stated that in lieu of flowers they requested donations to a local children's diabetes foundation. I then remembered that she had to take insulin from a very young age and always carried candy with her in cases she needed it.

Turns out she died 10 years ago from complications of her diabetes. She had apparently gone blind from it a couple years prior and went downhill from there. She was married with no children.

It was surreal finding out. I mean, it was 10 years ago. But I was just learning about it.
 
Has anyone ever got the urge to contact an old friend to discover they died. This is the second time in as many months this has happened to me. The first was two months ago, an old friend had been on my mind so I tried to contact him. At first I had little success all phones were disconnected and emails returned. I finally got his wife on the phone and was told the news he past six months ago, I wish I knew at the time. With talking with others I guess no one was informed, the wife just put him in the ground and their isn’t even a marker.

The second friend I just discovered today, he and I usually connected around the xmas holiday but this year went silent. He was always very hard to contact, he moved to Brazil and shipped out as a merchant marine six months out of the year. He owns a house about a thirty minute drive from me that he has rented out for years. It was his goal to move back to the US with his Brazilian wife and two kids. What alerted me to something wrong was that the rental property is overgrown and looks abandoned. At one time I helped him manage this rental property but it got to be to much so I suggested a property management outfit that would handle all.

Again all phones disconnected and emails returned, this time I had no way of contacting his wife, I knew her name but Brazil is a big place. My last resort which maybe should have been the first was the internet. On the first search I found out what happened to him. A drunk driver out on bail for a previous DUI ran him down while he was riding a bicycle outside the Brunswick, Georgia port as the ship he worked as the chief engineer was unloading. Lesson learned for me, keep closer contact with your friends regardless of distance and time apart.

no not yet....that would be such a shock

with the advent of social media many of my kindergarten acquaintances have reconnected on FB

it's kind of wild because we had all lost touch over the decades and now here we are able to see what happens to each other on a daily basis

also someone from high school set up a site called If You Grew Up in X, then you will remember when

there are over 6000 of us now and it was a small town so most names are familiar

at first I was uncertain of it but now I love checking in "from a distance"
 
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