a few weeks ago ... a friend of mine, through Jr high and High school ... passed away in the recovery room after a minor surgery

have you lost friends from your teen yrs ? ( I knew him for 26 yrs or more )

what things, if any helped you sort through the emotions ?



Mach

half my friends from my teen years are pretty much gone

IAintTheOne said:

Mach said:

its how it is in the sreets

Yeah

My friend just committed suicide almost a month ago

Very sad

DanceWme said:

I have lost 3 friends that way too

IAintTheOne said:

yes ... i know

lost a friend recently too she used to log on here sometimes as well

Sorry, I misunderstood the topic.
[Edited 11/28/06 5:50am]

first, Mach I'm so sorry I had no idea ...and to all of you who've lost a friend

I lost a friend (who I actually think of as my soulmate) when both of us were 19... he jumped from the local cliff face

sorry to hear about your loss (and the losses of others in the post ) ... i think as we age - inevitably "death" just gets closer to all of us ... in various forms - whether it is as you say "an old friend that you lost touch with" ... a grandparent... a parent ... etc ...

for me - i can honestly say i didnt think all that much about "death" and such things as "legacy" etc ... til recently ... when my father passed in 02 i think that is so life altering - you realize the "circle of life" etc ... with your kids ... and then at the end of 05 into 06 there seemed to be a 3 month period where alot of "my age"-deaths were occuring ... friends of friends(a 39 yr old guy just fell over that my wife knew) ... an old aquantance(a guy i used to exercise with and was 6 yrs my junior ! ) and of course my coisin who was my age (was killed in a tragic car accident last yr ... i think for me - i realized how fragile life is ... and not to take "good health " for granted - and "seize the day" etc ...

as far as things "helping you sort through the emotions" - sometimes i think just time .... reflections ... etc ... each death i mentioned above ... have brought out VERY different emotions .... for one- my cousin- she was religious and I think that funeral was the most positive funeral i have ever attended ...for the 39 yr old mentioned above - they set up a "trust foundation" that they have yearly fundraiser dinners to "find out more about the heart/virus that killed him " ...

Mach

I feel so sorry that you're going through this. It's truly awful to lose someone you've grown up with and feel so close to.

I don't know that I have any good advice for you - I think we all deal with loss in different ways and I know that I've dealt with it differently according to who it's been and the relationship I've had with them.

I've lost two very close friends.

One died in 1998, after routine surgery, like your friend. She went in to have a very minor op and didn't come out. I still don't understand what happened as she was very fit. She was very vivacious, a born entertainer and someone everybody wanted to be around. I was so lucky that she wanted to be with me and am happy that the time we did have was full of fun and happy times. I'm convinced that there will never be another like her in my life and that our friendship spanned many lifetimes. We talked once about previous lives and she was convinced she'd been a witch in a previous life.

Not long after her death, another friend had been to a medium that she was very impressed with. She took me along for a reading as I was interested in the subject. Towards the end of the reading, my friend Louise came though. She had only passed on a couple of months beforehand so initially I didn't believe it could be her but the medium told me so many things that were true and obscure that I really was convinced I was talking to her (so much so that I started talking directly to her, asking her if she remembered things and stuff and whether I would see her again - I'd really, to all intents and purposes, forgotten that I was in the room with a medium). Anyway, I asked whether she knew about her previous lives and she told me she'd been a herbalist. (And yes, we will see one another again one day - "yes, one day but you're not ready yet" is what she actually said to me).

I know that at the time I visited the medium I was still in mourning but it did comfort me to have evidence of the afterlife like that. I do think about Louise often - she is definately a soul-sister - and she sent me a message on the night I had to put my dog Charlie down to let me know she was there to meet him on the other side. (Actually, it was after she died that I got him and she had told me I'd get him during my encounter with the medium, although I didn't believe it at the time - I think she sent him to help me because my life took a totally different course as a result of having Charlie in my life).

Reviewing what I've typed, I know it all sounds like I'm away with the fairies, but I'm really very rational. Yes, I do believe in an afterlife and this has helped me through losing people in my life but I appreciate my beliefs aren't shared by everyone.

When I lost my other friend, Steve, it was very different. He was a very troubled soul who had drugs problems and felt rejected by people throughout his life. His death was a very violent one and it came at a time when everything seemed to be going badly in my own life.

I had been very close to Steve's mother but haven't been able to contact her or talk to her after his death, and I feel terrible about it, still, 12 years later. Basically he died by being hit by a train and when his mother called me to tell me what had happened she was crying, saying that there was nothing left of him. I couldn't handle it on top of everything else and I didn't know how to call back and ask about the funeral, whether there was one, or what was happening. I feel guilt about this when I think of it because I could have been so supportive to her and wasn't. Also, it was harder to come to terms that he'd gone because I didn't go to his funeral, so in a way it didn't seem real to me for a long time.

I hope you can find comfort in the friendship you had and that you can come to terms with the loss, but please don't rush yourself. They say time is a great healer and I've found it to be so. Although I do look back on Steve's death with some regrets I do cut myself some slack for the hard times I was going through at that stage in my life.



(gosh I've just previwed this and realised how long it is - sorry - I obviously had a lot of feelings still stuck inside of me).

I'm so sorry Mach... I hope your pain passes quickly.

I haven't lost a close, dear friend, but I have lost a parent...I know it's very different, but grief is grief...and reading on the subject helped me sort through emotions...also, because of other horrible incidents that happened around the time of my father's death, I ended up going to see a counselor. It helped

I'm really sorry to hear about this Mach. It's tough.

I've been through many deaths but 3 that threw me for a loop. 5 years ago my friend John died. He was 33. 3 years ago my cousin died, he was 37. Last year my best friend since Jr.High died, he was 38.

I can't believe 3 people that I was close in age as well as emotionally have died. It kept me thinking, "Am I next."


Pray honey. We must go on.


M

Awwww. Sorry about this.