I figured I would just post this b/c it has really been bothering me lately. And its not something many people talk about.
I went to the WORST school district. When I was in second grade a tornado (yea tornado in NY completely freak) ripped down a wall of a school in my district and killed i think it was 11 kids all in elementary school. I still remember watching the news and seeing the wall being gone but the blinds still swinging in the wind. Totally freaks me out...
When I was 13 my friend was murdered. Had words with the guy and he murdered him in the trail everyone took to go to the baseball fields. Still to this day I can't get the image of him in his casket wearing his boy scout uniform. I knew his throad had been slit and it freaked me out.
When I was in HS two kids I didn't know died. One of a freak heart attack while running on a treadmill the other committed suicide. Also a girl I ran track with died of ovarian cancer at the age of 18.
Then in my junior year a good friend of my ex's that we hung out with a bit died. He committed suicide. I think at that time I understood the whole death concept better then i had at 13. I really wasn't sure how to deal with it. I go to his grave every now and then and it makes me feel a bit better but I still get chills when I drive past the house he died in.
The year before I had Xander another friend of my ex's died. We had hung out with him more and I had even seen him after we had broken up. he was always really nice - alittle messed up (he loved to drink) but always nice. He was crossing the street in Virginia Beach and was hit by a drunk driver. I didn't know he had died until a month later when something was in the paper about him. I have gone to his grave and know hes dead but everytime I see a car like he use to drive I still look to see if its him. Is that normal???
I don't know many people who have had to deal with that much death at such a young age. I think I have a better understanding of it all and maybe I accept it better than most. (except when my gma died i couldn't accept that). Has anyone experienced something similar??? Do you think going to the grave site makes you feel better??? I have dealt with most of it but never found anyone that *truely* understood. My friend that died at 12 would have been 20 last week. It totally freaked me out to think of all he missed out on - all the things I have been thru since he died. Is that weird? I don't really think of the other people i knew that died in that same sense... I'm rambling now so yea I was just wondering if anyone had similar experiences...
Well I have had many family members pass on too and it is a hard thing. My grandmother died when I was only a week old. I will tell the story it's kind of sad but soo sentemental to me.....
Well my grandmother had cancer for maybe about 3-4 years(somewhere around that length). She was very very sick and pretty much on her death bed when I was due. Well I was born 1 week early and I thank god for that. My grandmother held on to her life just so she could see me be born and she died on the day I was supposed to be born. My mother and father told me she just wanted to hold her granddaughter just once and then she would just let go(of her life). I don't know her but deep down inside I have this simple connection with her. Whenever I think of her I cry. I go visit her grave but sometimes it is really hard for me. I just wish that maybe I could have known her for longer. I also asked my mom and dad why they didnt have any pictures of me and her just so I could have. They said that she was so sick that seeing those pictures would have made it worse. They wanted me to have a happy memory not totally sad memory of how she looked and was. God that makes me cry. I have like a frog in my throat. :cry:
I have also had two of my uncles pass away and my god father. One of my uncles passed away in his sleep and the other one died of a sudden stroke. When he died it was really hard to see my cousin say good bye to thier father. And my mom say goodbye to her brother(only brother). My godfather well his was suicide. My mother told me he died in his sleep(it happened when I was younger and didnt really understand suicicde)Finally just a few years ago she told me the truth. The reason he comitted suicide was because my great grandmother(my grandmas mom) had passed away.
Death is a scarey thing and I am scared of it!! IT takes time to make it easier and sometimes it doesnt get easier to face it.
My first "bestfriend" died of leukemia when we were 6. Two of my great grandmothers died between when I was 7 and 11. My favorite aunt dropped dead of a freak heart attack at 28 (DONT smoke while you're on birth control, please!) My great uncle died almost a year to the day after that in the same ICU. My grandmother committed suicide the same day I found out I was pregnant after she was diagnosed with fatal lung cancer. My grandfather killed my step grandmother and later tried to hang himself after being convicted of first degree murder.
Two members of my senior class have already died, Memory- I went to school with her for 7 years and she died, just died.
My best friend from middle school is currently on trial for two seperate murders. The murder of a taxi cab driver and John Hand the founder of Denver's free university.
My grandmother is in the hospital now, and will mostly likely be diagnosed with stomach cancer after vomitting up a pint of blood this morning.
Yeah, i know death. Death and I are real familiar.
I've never found visiting a grave site to be of any consilation. When I feel lost I look for my loved ones in the sky. I hold a token of them, a ring, a picture, close to my heart and I just tell them what I'm feeling. I don't want to believe that those people are tied to this place when they die, I want to believe that they've gone onto a brighter, better place. Not a grave, or mosaleum.
now I'm rambling too.
I haven't had much experience with the death of loved ones. Most of the older people in my family were already dead by the time I was born; of my immediate family (parents and siblings), everybody's still alive and kicking.
Some acquaintances of mine have died, but not until long after I stopped knowing them. I only heard about these deaths in passing, long after the fact. They didn't have much effect on me; I never would've seen these people again even if they'd lived; never wanted to see them again. So, although I was sorry to hear of their deaths, they didn't effect me, like, personally.
I had a problem with heroin for awhile, a long time ago. One thing about heroin, death is sort of an ever-present fact of life when you use it. A lot of times, heroin users will "go out"... they take too big a shot, pass out, and just quietly stop breathing. If nobody shakes them, slaps them around and wakes them up, they die. This is something that happened on a pretty regular basis to me and those around me when I was using. It made me realize how close we all are to death. all the time. It made me realize how easy death is, or can be. It made me not be afraid to die, because basically I've already died on numerous occasions, and been brought back, and I know death isn't scary. It's just... nothing.
In a way, this is not a good thing to know. It makes it too easy to give up. Knowing what I know, I can't now imagine, for instance, suffering indefinitely from a chronic terminal illness. I know how to end my life, and I know that I would end it, before I'd linger around indefinitely in pain with no hope of recovery. I am afraid of suffering. I just hope I wouldn't give up too soon, before all hope of recovery was gone. This is the danger of knowing death on intimate terms, of losing your fear of death; in doing so, you also lose your perspective of the sanctity of life; you lose your proper respect and appreciation for life.
Maybe it's not a bad thing, to retain a little fear of death. Maybe it makes you willing to try harder and appreciate life more. Sometimes, even now, I have trouble attaching much significance or importance to anything around me. I know that I could've died years ago, and if I had, life would still be going on just the same, only without me in it. Knowing this, thinking this, makes my life seem small, insignificant and unimportant.
Oh well, sorry for rambling. My point is, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a fear of death, or at least a healthy respect for the seriousness of it. In other cultures where death is much more omnipresent, much more acknowledged as a matter-of-fact thing, I'm not sure people get as much out of life, or really live their lives to the fullest, as we do here, where death is a taboo, a secret, a big dark mystery. After all, life is an ongoing process, but death is just a one-time event. Even if it's traumatic, once it's over, it's really over. So why dwell on it, why even acknowledge it, until the time comes? Just live your life, and appreciate and enjoy your life.
That's what I'm trying to do, although it's difficult sometimes because of my past history, because it's difficult for me to unlearn what I already know. That said, I'm not suicidal and never have been, and have never and would never attempt suicide unless my life was really and truly over, as in no reason to go on living. And I don't really see that happening unless I was terminally ill.
Just my thoughts, ~ fairy
My hometown is really small but a lot of kids commit suicide and die from accidents and things around here. One of the guys in my grade in high school killed himself when we were juniors and I remember going over to talk to his parents a while after it happened. I was completely freaked out being in his house and going into his room where it happened. When I see cars like he has I think of him, and the image of him in his coffin will never go away. His locker was right next to mine and I avoided getting things out of my locker if I could.
When I drive past where my grandpa's grave is, I get freaked out. I haven't visited since he died in September.
A lot of people I know have died and I don't really know what to do to deal with it. I am atheist and none of the "it's the way god intended it blah blah" kind of things work for me because they mean nothing.
i've dealt with alot of death in my life....
when i was 7 my dad commited suicide. I remember the night that he did it.....he called us on the phone and told me he loved me and to be a good girl...then i handed the phone back to my step mom ( my dad and her were engaged at the time) and she kept sayin my dads name over and over. The next morning they told me my dad had a heartattack, and it was weird cuz all my life i knew that something was missing like something i didnt know...i later found out when i was 14 that he had commited suicide. my dads brother, my uncle, also commited suicide but i didnt really know him that well.
the same step mom and i kept in touch long after and every summer i would go and visit her for a month or 2..until last year..February 20, 2003 she died. It was so hard for me..i take all the times for granted when i didnt call her just to see how she was doing becuz i was "too busy". she went in for one of them surgeries where they staple your stomach so she could loose weight...the doctors messed up her stomach and were doing secret surgeries without telling the family. Last year over thanksgiving i went down and saw her in the hospital..it was soo hard she didnt look the same at all .She had tubes down her throat and all this stuff hooked up to her...she was squeezing my hand...and tried saying something to me but we couldnt understand her cuz of the tube in her throat....to this day i wish i knew what she was saying :cry: she had already bought me a christmas present earlier that summer...and it was a baby blue cross necklace (my favorite color and i told her i wanted a cross necklace) it was perfect...now i cant go anywhere without wearing..i still think about her all the time.
also last year in october..i had a close friend of mine die in a car crash. he was the passenger in a car of someone who was racing another car.. they hit a telephone pole and he was ejected through the windshield. The funeral was so sad...and i swear i still see him driving around in his car..i see the exact same car and it looks like him driving it..its so weird
all you gotta do is be stong through times like these... god wont give u something in life if he knows u cant handle it
i hear ya erika... i'm not atheist but i just feel like why the hell would you take someone everyone loved if you love us??? just to hurt us... strange...
i havent dealt with a lot of death in my life.but thats one subject i dont like to talk about.especially with my grandma.whenever she mentions dying i get mad at her.i cant imagine not having her or my other family members around.when i was 6 my uncle was stabbed to death in mexico-he was 14.that freaked me out a lot,but now looking back on his death even though it was something horrible-it really changed all of my familys lives.a lot of things would NOT have happend if he hadnt died.and i know hes watching over us,i dont know i just dont like to talk about death:(it depresses me.
I guess you could say I've dealt with a lot of death, but I've never really looked at it that way. I mean, each death affected me differently so I never really grouped them together before.
When I was 6 my best friend was hit by a car walking home from my house. (she lived across the street on the military base) I wasn't allowed to go to her funeral. My parents thought it would be too tramitizing for me.
When I was 12 my friend Joey had a heart attack after I kicked a ball that he caught during kickball in PE. My school was scheduled to have a "Good-bye" dance that night for all the 8th graders. It was cancelled.
My sophomore year of high school one of my good friends committed suicide in his barn. My current BF and I were the last ones to see him alive.
On New Year's Eve of 2001-2002 my dad's dad, Pops, died from alzhiemers. About one month later his wife, Jackie, died from a brain tumor discovered the day before. Then in March of 2002 my Grandpa (mom's dad) died in my living room. He drowned in his own fluids.
Death is a very touchy subject for me. I have tried to commit suicide a few times in my past and actually watching people die affected me a great deal. But until my son was born I was never afraid to die. Now I am scared shitless! When ever I think about my own death I worry about how he will feel, what will happen to him, how much of his life I will miss, etc. He is so much my life now that I think I value it enough to be scared of the end. You know?