Is this a lot?
 

How many people do you know who have died? Like, people you interacted with and knew--not celebrities, friends of friends, or relatives who died before you were born.

I just came up with 24 names, including three from the Cellar (Sundae, Brianna, and LadySycamore.) Obviously the number skyrockets as you get older, but for a 37-year-old that seems like a lot. Is it?

Everyone I know who has died are still dead. I miss my parents of course, but I miss my grandfather the most. There was a boy hood friend who died at 26.[emoji22]

tarheel, that needs to be printed on a T-shirt.


Everyone I know who has died are still dead



Amanda and I were just talking about this last night. I don't have anyone really close to me that's died yet. Grandparents, an Uncle, a work friend or two... maybe around 10-12 people ... probably way more if I widen the circle... but just people I was actively in touch with, it's not so many.

And of course Beest.

I don't know if it's a lot. Depends on how many people you know in the first place.

You have to figure that the rate will increase over time as you and all the people you know get older.

When people of your generation die, it's the most brutal. There have been a handful for me, and they suck. People leaving behind a spouse and kids who are still at home. It's not right. My cousin died when he was around 13. That's just bullshit right there. Tractor he was driving flipped on him.

I'm 77 and it took about a minute to get to 24 names and certain there are twice that waiting for another minute.

Fuck, I'd mentally blocked that one; too recent. A lot of my family deaths are from colon cancer, it's a touchy subject around here.

At least three dozen. :(

And Buster

My friend who died because she tried alternative medicine for her cancer, is the first really close friend who died. My father died when I was 3 but because of my early age it is a whole 'nother ball of wax.

Between the guys I knew in the military who were killed and the people I got to know while working in healthcare who died, I've lost count. By your age, I had known quite a few more people who had died. Then there're grandparents, uncles, aunts, in-laws, father and a niece's 1 yo. Probably only a dozen to a dozen and a half that I was actually with when they died. I've assisted with autopsies; but, not of anyone I knew.

I think "a lot", over a long period of time, has more to do with the cumulative impact than the numbers. Over a short term, the numbers would be easier to characterize as relatively many or few.

we'll all be stone dead in a moment

JayMcGee - John - introduced me to The Cellar.

dad when i was 5
Garnd dads Befor i was born
grand mothers 1 ( hint for moms DONT hand yer young son his grandmother ashes at her burial !!!!!)
grand mother 2 when i was 18ish ( she was in her 90s , no big suprise , but still sucked )
96 and 97 were Verry bad years for me and my wife
9/11/ 96 ( day After my Bday ) my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer , she died on 12/26/96 ( oh and her address , and the house i grew up in was 1226 )
Carols mom had a wreck the day befor Thanks giving , died that saterday
Sudo dad took a nap spring of 97 , woke up dead ( heart failure )
Sudo mom died of lung cancer not long after
So yes i have experienced death , it FUCKING SUCKS !!!!!
But we go on , we live with it , untill we dont
Thats why i dont get verry close with folks , it hurts when they are gone .
sorta numb to it at this point

chronological order

People I actually interacted with -excluding elderly distant relatives I saw once every few years when they's visit my grandparents at christmas...

Great Grandmother, three grandparents (one cancer in old(er) age, two just old age), a fellow PhD student (cancer), FIL (heart/lungs/rough life, age), father of one of Thor's friends (cancer) beest's uncle (old age), beest (cancer) next door neighbor (cancer).

still in single digits. But let me tell you it's enough. Every day I am terrified one of my kids will be killed. I know, it's just a part of he grieving process, but it sucks.

I'm 48, for reference. (just) I keep thinking I'm 38 though :/

Forgot the young ones.... One of the kids' waterpolo peers killed in a car accident and one of the boys' teammates committed suicide a couple of years ago :( and the dwellars already mentioned of course

Forgot the youngsters. Kids waterpolo peer and coach in a car crash, boys'hockey teammate, suicide

I've known two people who drowned in the prime of life. Separate incidents.

One of them was a lawyer I traveled with to a client's facility for a week. We weren't close friends or anything, but he and I spent a week traveling together, just the two of us. A couple years later I learned that he had been swept out to sea while swimming at dusk and he got caught in a riptide. My scout troop takes trips to the same beach every year, and even though we have all these safety systems in place, and we're good at managing the risks, I've stopped going on that trip because it scares me too much. Not relaxing at all. The two times I did go, I just stood on the beach counting heads in the surf over and over again for hours.

Second drowning victim is a guy I studied abroad with. Again, not super close, but there were 25 of us on a program together and there were plenty of times that I hung out with him in groups at parties and in class. I read in alumni class notes that he also drowned while on vacation someplace. No details. He would have been in his late 20s.

The only people close to me who have died were older and sick, so while it was heartbreaking, it wasn't a shock.

I will do you a favor by joining the circle when I kick the bucket. When do you want me to go? This year next year? Lets make it after next cuz the guys are planning a meet in NE next fall. I would like to be alive when I go.

when do i want you to die?



any time after I do.




unless you were planning on leaving me more than $1mil. In which case, let's say 5 years.

Well I start my SSI in November for a whopping $1579 a month of which a chunk comes out for Medicare. I took care of my father for 6 years. Every year he got a cost of living increase of 200 bucks, but Medicare increased 180. Still cheap though. The other things you know about will be spent frivolously. If there is anything left you can have it.

Well, I'll be stoned very shortly, but, hopefully, not dead.

Shit that number's harder to calculate than I thought it would be.

I stopped counting at 31.

This thread has stuck in my mind these past several days and I guess that is OK.
I don't intend to make a formal list, but I have a pretty good idea who is on it so far and it grows in fits and starts at an alarming rate, usually with an "Damn, how could I have missed ..."

I am currently carrying easily a hundred RIP's around.

I count 17, not counting my great grandmother, who died when I was about three.
Both parents about a year apart, most of my aunts and uncles, who don't count either because they hated on me and thus don't count as human beings in my book, five good friends, two by their own hand (fatal illnesses), one sudden stroke (preventable, had she asked me for advice/help), one auto accident and one murdered. The rest of various maladies and old age.

I also made a very short list of three who I wish would hurry up and die already. No details available due to high classification levels.

It's not so much the number of people I've known who've died but that in nearly every case the person had died and for one reason or another I was not informed of it until much later in most cases, or a few days in other cases.

It left me with a really warped conception of death. I most cases I went about my day thinking that the person was alive and I would be planning to see them or I'd be writing them a letter that I intended to send, or just had the idea, "I should get in touch with them and see how they are doing."

So, I found out they had died, sometimes months earlier, but in my mind they were still alive and only a phone call away.

It leaves me thinking that people actually only exist in my mind.


https://www.theonion.com/world-death...ent-1819564171

It's all we have to work with so there it is.

If you're not holding their hand they belong to Schrodinger.

I was recently surprised to learn that a friend from school, who created the USB bus, had died.

I cut this cartoon out years ago. It illustrates foot's dilemma.

https://punch.photoshelter.com/image/I0000df.qqq60P2w

Not so funny was the experience soldiers often had in Vietnam: Your buddy was wounded and evacuated. Whether he died or was sent home, it was likely that one's feeling of loss was the same.

I would guess it's a lot, but then again I have no scientific evidence of that. I've always liked the phrase, "to know death, is to fully know life."

I've said it for a long time now, Death is part of Life.

Welcome to the cellar AprilElizabeth.

Those are the only good kind.

She's either quite early, or quite late.:3eye:

Death is when we finally learn what someone did. An obituary is interesting since that is when we learn what that person really did. Before that, most are unknown.

They have to be in a box. We bury them so that nobody will open the box. Then they are both dead and alive.

That's what he said.

No, just have to be out of sight.

Or on the opposite side of the world from us? I think it's April in China right now....

If you don't touch that string, then it will not be affected. Are you talking particle theory or wave theory?

You think he said it. Did you actually touch the word? Then how do you know it really exists? What number quantified it?

Death is the inverse of life. A great Greek philosopher once said it. It must be true. (Or maybe The Don said it. Same thing.)

I have studiously avoided this thread. And now, I see my friends, and others, have posted here. The prospect of the mortality of the people I know, people I love--my *own* mortality, has become a moving force in my life recently.

It feels like a biiiig swell in the ocean. I'm close enough to the beach to see the shore, but the energy of the indifferent ocean moves me up, up, then slides away. I've seen these swells before, I've seen the waves break. I know one day the crest will loom over me like a shroud and I'll have the irresistible urge to paddle and thrash and maybe I'll make it through the wave...

But I know the exertion will make my fight against the next, inevitable, inexorable, implacable wave futile. I'll be tossed and tumbled, my airless screams unheard until they burst from my lungs in a stream of silvery bubbles, trailing away, into the light.

Yes, Clodfobble, that's a lot. Still, the waves outnumber us.

but maybe CF interacts with more people than your average dwellar?