How many of you have lost close friends?

[Hardrada]

I am running out of the ones I used to confide in. And didn't have all that many to begin with. But this is concomitant to increasing age I suppose.

[Ava]

1. when i was 13 one of my best friends found out she had leukemia

she died last year.

[Kire]

2. My best friend fell off a cliff two years ago.

He was goofing off on a train going up one of the Himalayas. I wouldn't be surprised if drugs were involved.

[Ava]

3. sorry to hear about that Kire

[Kire]

4. thanks

sorry about your friend

[Ava]

6. thanks. I'm sad she is gone but i understand why they quit treatment

it was horrible and she was too tired.

[SeattleGirl]

5. I lost my best friend a month before my high school graduation.

Have lost others since then. :cry:

[Ava]

7. sorry seattlegirl

[Jade Fox]

25. My best friend was also killed in High School......

Hit by a drunk driver.

[SeattleGirl]

27. My friend died of leukemia

Sad, sad, sad.

[Hardrada]

30. I had a childhood playmate who became kind of a rebel

and was killed when his motorcycle went off the road when he was still in high school. I think he would have been an interesting person had he lived on to later years.

[merh]

8. Too many to count

But never too many to love and to miss.

They were gifts that I will always cherish.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

11. I hear you, my friend...

:hug:

[merh]

13. ...

:hug:

[Jamastiene]

9. Yes. Long story: One of my best friends committed suicide and

one of my other longest known best friends got killed in a car accident all within one year, my tenth grade year. In that same time span, I had a long conversation about music and life in general with a friend who got killed in a car accident that very afternoon not one hour after our conversation. It fucked me up to see three of them die so close together like that. Knowing that I was one of the last people to ever see two of the three alive really fucked me up even worse. I drew inward after that. It does seem that every time I get a really good friend, those few in a lifetime types of people that you meet, they die for no good reason. It adds new meaning to only the good die young. My band wrote a song about one of our friends who got killed at 19 years old. He died too young too. Another sweetheart that was too good for this world. Precious people who deserved longer lives. I sure miss them.

I don't get nearly as close to people now. Remembering their short lives and how much they deserved to live longer sorta fucks me up all over again. I'd love to tell Stanley's story sometime and Timmy's and Stevie's story too, but their deaths were all so tragic. I don't think I could tell even one of them without welling up with tears. My allergies have made it nearly impossible to breathe as it is now.

I feel for you. I understand how it feels to lose close friends. It's the kind of heartbreak that you can't explain to someone who hasn't experienced it.

Like I said, it'll fuck you up inside.

Here is what I can share and some of it still eats my heart out. I still have the stand-up notebook that Stevie gave me in the 7th grade. I keep it close to me always. The sticker for a local night club is still on it. It has been there all these years. I use it when I am writing music. I know Stevie would love to know that. We both loved some kick ass much.

I can still see Stanley drinking Jack Daniels in the radio station with me during my 3 to 5 show the last day he was alive. No one else saw him alive after that. Next time he was seen, it was gruesome. They found his body less than 500 feet from where I live now. He took tons of his mother's prescription sleeping pills and jumped off the bridge. That didn't kill him. He died of exposure when he landed in the tree and got all busted up.

His heartless cousin said the very next day that he was going to hell for committing suicide. I have hated his cousin for that cold, heartless callous comment ever since. No wonder Stanley committed suicide. Everyone who loved Stanley, except me, blamed his girlfriend for the fight that sent him over the edge. I knew Stanley and from some of his last words, I knew he would not have wanted everyone to blame her. I decided to make friends with her to give her a break from some of the extreme hatred that was directed toward her during that time. She was my neighbor. We were all very close. I couldn't blame her. Fights happen. Stanley was a great guy, but I know he didn't want her blamed for what he did. It was the last thing he said and he said it to me.

I never told anyone that I was actually the last person to see him alive or talk to him. The emotions of the others turned to blame, hatred, and those cold callous religious judgments. Fuck them. Stanley deserved to be remembered better. Fuck them all. After that, like I said, I drew inward, got into punk rock, cutting, and drugs myself. I wish I had known he was serious. I wish I knew then what I know now. We were all suicidal back then. Who know when one of us was going to really do it? And why did the others get on some high horse as if they had never tried it or thought about it themselves? Was it really necessary for his cousin to say he was going to hell right after they found his body? I mean, really. Fuck them all. Punk rock saved me from the same fate as Stanley. They sure didn't help at all. I just couldn't take their cold hearted comments.

I wasn't as close to Timmy, but I was one of the last people to talk to him. It was another music loving conversation. The car wreck threw him through the windshield and over 100 feet when the car wrecked. He was in the back seat. They weren't strict on backseat safety belt use back then. I wish they had been.

A message to the OP: You can make friends with me. I am pretty sure I ain't going anywhere anytime soon. I feel so old inside, so drained, so empty, so nihilistic. Most of the time, though, I am pretty happy go lucky and not so depressed any more, nowadays. People like me don't die. We watch those around us go; one by one, unfortunately.

[Hardrada]

16. Mine I have lost at a later stage in life.

These were people who were close enough to me that I let them write in my notebook/journal, an important thing since I am a writer and historian and normally reserve notebooks for serious observations or project ideas or poetry. The lost friends were: a pastor and youth minister, a teacher and jazz musician/composer and a sculptor (mostly in metal). Thanks for your reply, if you can think of DU as writing in my notebook as a friend (in your replies to me) then you are certainly welcome!

[Shine]

21. Wow, Jamastiene.

:hug:
I am sorry you experienced such a hard lesson of loss at such a young age. When we are young, it is easy to assume we will live forever. Sudden death wakes us up to the ephemeral nature of our lives. We're only passin' through, so we might as well live Life fully, with great Joy and Gratitude. It is a gift, simply to be alive...and one that sadly, many take for granted.

People die, but Love doesn't die. Your friendship and the happy memories you have of them live on, in your heart. :hug:

Peace to you.

[RebelOne]

10. Just lost a friend three days ago.

She was 54 and died of cancer.

[Shine]

22. Hugs to you, RebelOne....

:hug: :hug: :hug:
Peace and Comfort to you, as well...

[Heidi]

12. I lost my best girlfriend to breast cancer 19 years ago.

Her name was Jerri, and she had been my 11th grade English teacher. She was a beautiful, intelligent, quirky, kind and spirited southern belle. I was fortunate to have her physical presence in my life for many years, and her spirit is with me still. :)

[GoddessOfGuinness]

14. My closest friends I've lost to lack of commitment

I've never been one to let distance get in the way of a close friendship. But I've gotten tired of doing all the work. Too many unreturned phone calls and emails. If they didn't have enough regard for me to reply; they must not have been such great folks as I thought.

It bites; but that's the way it is. :(

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

15. I've lost a couple that way

The ones that are your close friends when they need you...then the minute you need support they are busy with their lives...overall though I'm blessed to have more than a few and we've all been there for one another over the years...and I guess I'm good in the "making friends" department too

in order to have friends, one has to be a friend

[Jade Fox]

26. I've had to make that decision too....

The one to stop doing all the work. It cost me.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

37. I don't really see that it cost me much...

They're always welcome if they choose to renew the friendship. It costs them more if they don't.

[merh]

28. I don't understand that

I don't understand why some folks, those that tell you they cherish your friendship, don't return calls or emails. It is very hurtful, as if you aren't good enough for a reply.

It does bite. :(

:hug:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

38. Maybe it's just that I've been too available...

It's easy to take for granted the things we can always count on.

Thanks for the hug! :hug:

[merh]

39. Well, I guess that could be it

I don't think I can ever change, I want to be there for folks the way I want them to be there for me.
That golden rule thing.

Thank you :hug:

[merh]

40. I've thought about this

and I think it boils down to folks not knowing how to have a relationship, not knowing how to show concern and not appreciating a very simple dynamic, and that is to treat folks as you want to be treated.

Hugs for you this a.m. GoddessOfGuinness :hug:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

58. You are such a dear!

You always seem to know exactly what to say. :):hug::loveya:

[ScreamingMeemie]

17. My dearest friend and prom date killed himself the week before

Prom. He didn't want to go away to college (on scholarship) and his father had told him to go or get out of their house. This, of course, was just the straw that broke the camel's back. He had quite a few troubles. Mark M., I still miss you...

As for the living, My best friend in the world is married to a career military man and it has been difficult for us to maintain our friendship over the years. I did stand up in her wedding, and we exchange Christmas cards and the occasional email, but I miss her presence in my life.

[Oeditpus Rex]

18. One

He had AIDS, and I didn't know it.

I was mad at him for a long time for not telling me. I thought we had that kind of relationship.

But I guess you never really know.

[Shine]

19. What is Remembered, Lives.........

:hug:

Love NEVER dies.

[xchrom]

20. two of my closest friends have moved -- the rest are dead.

my whole gay tribe are all in the grave.

brian

jerry

brian

bill

mark

and more who were also lovers

and the friends i made as a result of the others being sick -- they are all gone now too.

i'm the only person i know out of a lifetime of friends besides those who have moved.

lol -- can i know ''myself'' in that context -- sure, why not?

[Hardrada]

29. I certainly can emphathize

though I did not have as many close friends. I do have two old friends who moved up to Canada to avoid the Draft and this was a loss but we now communicate by email so that is something. One of my wife's closest friends died when she was just in her twenties and this was a shock.

[HuskerDU]

23. My best friend disappeared many years ago. His nickname

was 'Groove'. The past several years I have been searching for him on the 'net to no avail. I fear that he may be dead. Groove was a good hearted person who found a lot of trouble. His mother doesn't even know where he is today.

I will keep looking for him though. I just fear that with noone from his past knowing his whereabouts, he may die in a gutter as an unidentified homeless person. :(

If you come across a crazy guy named Groove, about 35 years old, PLEASE let me know. Last known whereabouts was Lacross Wisconsin. Thanks!

[Elidor]

24. My best friend and roommate, Mark

He was the ONLY cool roommate I ever had (apart from my SO), but there had been some tension between us because he moved his fiance into the apartment without asking me - something uncharacteristic of his usual thoughtful ways. One night while he was at work, she and I had a great long talk and decided we liked eachother. She invited me to move in with them when they got a house after their wedding.

Just as our talk was ending and I was getting ready for bed, we got the call: Mark had fallen asleep behind the wheel (he had terrible apnea) and driven straight into a concrete bridge support. He was a helluva good guy, loved by all, a huge former bouncer with the heart of a sprite and a profound ability to get people to work through differences and come together as a team. His life was unfinished and the void he left could never be filled. But I think of his smile and his laugh and his indomitable spirit and know that he is all right, wherever he is. And after many tribulations, we, his friends, are all right, too.

[greatauntoftriplets]

31. Two of my dearest friends ever have died....

One nearly 20 years ago, the other last summer. I still think of them both every day.

On edit: Both died of cancer.

[Hardrada]

33. Sorry to hear that. It is so important to remember them.

I put one of My lost buddies into some memoirs I wrote so Bill will always be around that way.

[aePrime]

32. My best friend died a couple of years ago

We'd known each other since elementary school. I basically lived at his house growing up. In college we were on and off roommates, depending on the situation.

He had just graduated university, and I had another semester to go. He moved from our little college town to another state to take a job. I had asked him to be my best man at my upcoming wedding. His sister also lived in our little town, and he drove over one weekend to visit everybody. My fiancee, his sister, he and I all had breakfast together that morning before he left to go back to his new city. While driving back home, he was hit head-on by a young woman who was trying to pass six or seven cars in a row coming the other way.

[Hardrada]

34. You have my sympathies. It's hard to lose someone so

close they are almost family. And to lose them so quickly too. At least with my friends I had time for some last phone calls and visits.

[nytemare]

35. When I was 18, I had 4 good friends die in a car wreck.

I believe there are events in people's lives that truly shape who they are, and this was surely one of those events for me. I was in band with them. Every Friday night, after football games for 3 years we would hang out for hours.

Two of them were 18, one 17, one 16.

:cry:

[babydollhead]

61. 4 friends died in car crash in 10th grade

[Fox Mulder]

36. I lost one a week before the start of my senior year in high school.

I still think about him to this day. :cry:

[Lilith Velkor]

41. People who get close to me usually go insane

So I started befriending people who were already nuts, but they would just get worse.

I can't even remember the last time I had someone to confide in.

[merh]

43. It is probably that they were not wound to tight before they

got close to you, you just were there for the unraveling and that is tough to watch.

:hug:

[Lilith Velkor]

45. I know

Sane people avoid me, or tell me to go get help and then abandon me.

Apparently I'm supposed to pull money and emotional support out of my own ass, but it's not there. (I checked.) Pills and platitudes are an inadequate substitute for these things, but normal people never seem to understand that.

[merh]

47. If I give you a cyber hug

and include you in my prayers, is that okay?

I haven't much more than that to offer. :hug:

I can offer you my ear (eyes) and a cyber shoulder, pmail me if you need to vent.

:hug:

[Lilith Velkor]

51. Sure

Thank you :hug:

[merh]

52. You are welcome

:hug:

[RetroLounge]

42. One of my best friends from Chicago

an ex-girlfriend, was raped and killed in her bed by 3 intruders about 7 years ago.

They were caught a few weeks later after they had killed another woman.

I still miss her.

RL

[InvisibleTouch]

44. Quite a few.

I sometimes feel like the lone survivor of a long war. That's not really the case, since I still have quite a few friends left, but sometimes I can't help focusing more on the ones who are gone. Definitely, one of the hardest things about getting older is that we start losing the people we love (and I'm not that old). When we had a family tragedy a few years ago, I was better equipped to handle it than my mother, because I'd been through it so many more times than she.

[jukes]

46. all my freinds are cats

no one else seems to "get" me...

[azmouse]

48. My friend Donna died last Sept

She was in my wedding as matron of honor. I loved her like a sister.
She died of cancer at the young age of 51.

[1gobluedem]

49. My best friend from childhood was kidnapped off the side of the expressway

When we were 30 (almost 16 years ago). She's not been seen since. I think about her every day.

[jeanarrett]

55. I am sorry for this. . . being from Michigan, I know who you mean.

One of my best friends from high school shot herself a week before Christmas a few years back. She had 5 kids like me and her oldest daughter found her after hearing a weird sound upstairs. This makes me very angry at her for the trauma it has caused her children, especially her oldest daughter. She was the happy, go-lucky, always laughing one in our crowd and no one had ever seen her depressed. That is the sad thing--she must have been so unhappy and hid it so well. I think of her often and am no longer angry, just profoundly sad--we had always talked about getting together with our kids and never did because we lived quite aways apart--I lived in the U.P. at the time and she lived in lower Michigan. I wish I could have talked to her and helped her somehow. My father had committed suicide a few years before that, so maybe I could have helped her understand that it could get better. Oh well. . . shoulda, woulda, coulda. If only we all had crystal balls.

[1gobluedem]

59. I know how you feel

My friend moved when we were in 7th grade, just to the next town but, at that age, it might as well have been across the country.

I often think that if they had only stayed in our town, she would've continued to hang out with us, would've gone away to college and more than likely wouldn't have been in the situation she was when she disappeared. I'm almost positive her creepy fiance was involved.

I'm sorry about your friend. I hope her children have been able to work through the trauma at least somewhat. I know that I'll never be completely over my friend's disappearance.

[Squatch]

50. Lost 2 in Iraq.

Both to IEDs.

They both came back in coffins, though one's remains didn't come 1/2 way to filling the box.

Shit.

One just had a new baby girl.

[merh]

53. Sorry Squatch.

:hug:

:cry::patriot: :cry::patriot:

[sendero]

54. My best friend in high school....

... was a year or two younger than me.

I moved away to go to school, came back to town on weekends. I didn't see him but every month or so, the last time I dropped by his house he played a few licks through his Pignose and seemed to be getting a plan for his life together.

Two weeks later he was dead. He was rooming with a group of guys I didn't know. They were all going to work, when they got to the car Steve said "wait a sec, I need to use the bathroom". He went back to the apartment. After almost a half-hour, they went back and found him, a plastic bag over his head connected to a nitrous oxide tank they had all stolen.

That't the story anyway, but I've never really believed it. Steve was no idiot, he would know that you can't breathe just NO. And he certainly wasn't suicidal as far as I knew.

The death was ruled "unconditional", even the coroner couldn't decide if it was an accident, suicide or something else. Steve was pretty good at going out on limbs, I've always felt like foul play might be involved, and apparently some other friends of his (that I didn't know) felt the same.

Anyway, it always seems like the special people leave the earth early. Steve was a one-of-a-kind, a great friend and quite possibly a future rock star :)

[ThomCat]

56. My best friend was murdered over 10 years ago.

But we couldn't prove who did it...

I miss you Bob.

[MikeH]

57. The husband of one of my high school classmates

In the late 1970's, the year of my high school class's 10 year reunion, I discovered that a few of my high school classmates from Illinois were living in San Diego. One in particular was a woman; I had gotten together with her and her husband, and I found that I had really liked and hit it off with her husband.

I got together with her and her husband a number of times in the 1980's; we were able to talk about a number of topics, including school memories, memories of the town where we lived, and other things. I wasn't strongly interested in politics at the time; I think I was just starting to discover then that I was politically liberal, and that I didn't like the conservative Republicans. I especially didn't like the mailing I had been getting from conservative organizations. My friends seemed to be liberal politically; I know that the woman, my classmate, didn't like Bush I in very early 1989, in large part because of his position on abortion.

The man developed stomach cancer in 1989, and died a couple of months before his 40th birthday. I have not been in contact much with the woman since then; as it turned out it was her husband that I had really hit it off with.

Now I am sad to think about what I missed out in being able to talk about with this friend in the 1990's and since, both about things in my personal life, and what has been happening politically.

[skygazer]

60. I have a cemetery run I make when I go home to visit

Takes two days. Most of the people I'm saying howdy to died before they (and I) were 21. By that stage in my life, I'd lost at least 10 close friends that I can think of off the top of my head - many more since. Overdoses, car accidents (mostly alcohol fueled), suicides and murders with a smattering of oddball circumstances like heart attacks and one guy who choked to death on his own vomit during an epileptic siezure.

In one cemetery alone lies my mother, my oldest friend's parents (who were like parents to me), four very close friends, another friend's father (who I was also close to) and her 6 year old son (who would be 20 now). The last was a friend of MY son's, who was 4 when it happened.

[KatyaR]

62. Yes, I've lost several.

- My cousin, just a few years younger than me, who died of leukemia when she was 19

- My best friend in graduate school (I would have never made it through without her) who died 22 years ago this month

- My grandmother, who was my very best friend in the entire world--she died at age 86 and when I was 24

- A very good friend of mine from high school, one year older than me, who died in his sleep of a heart attack less than two years after my mom's death in 1999

- Another friend from high school who I'd grown up in church with, who committed suicide at age 19 while we were in our first semester of college

- The love of my life, who committed suicide 14 years ago at the age of 36.

Add on top of that both parents, all my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and several other relatives, and there's just about nobody left.

My life has never been the same. I feel like my heart's been torn apart and there's nothing there to ever love like that again. I know we all lose people, but it's hard to lose the ones you're closest to.