In Memory Of...

[Rhubarbodendron]

cool idea, thestrangequark! I like that pic of your brother with the long hair. A very handsome young man!

My grandaunt died 3 years ago. We were very close and though she was very old (103) it did come as quite a a surprise as she was in xcellent health. She even had all her teeth!
She was very educated, had friends that were writers, painters and musicians and she loved her garden and had tamed all the birds there. It's fun to have a wild bird sit on your finger without the least bit of fear, though it can be a bit anoying to have tiny footprints on your cake and a few raisins missing

I particularly love this pic of her as it captures her personality so well:

[BillJ]

Too many to count. But I think about them daily...

[tomalak301]

In this month where we do honor loved ones and friends who have passed on, this is a great thread tsq.

I've had some friends pass away but the one who saddened me the most in my life was my Grandma on my father's side. I forget the year she passed away (I was coming home from school of religion when she passed on, so I'd like to say early to mid 90s, but it was in October) but she was a saint. She was active, would always make me smile, had the best cinnamon rolls you would ever eat, and whenever she came to our house, she would help clean it. She was a real inspiration and I took it really hard when he died.

[Shaytan]

I miss my parents. My mother died in 2002 and my father in 2010. They were not perfect, far from it but in the end, it doesn't matter, I still miss them.



I don't have a good picture of my grandmother on my mother's side but she was a great woman and a great grandmother She was 98 years old when she died in 2007.

[Gryffindorian]

Ruaidhri, you have your father's eyes. You look just like him.

[Mutenroshi]

I haven't lost anyone. Yet.
Still don't know how I'll react...

[Kestra]

Loving the pictures and the stories.

I'm just going to mention one person right now. He was more of a grandparent to me than my biological grandparents. Basically what happened is right before my sister was born, my parents put an ad in the paper for a babysitter/nanny. They already had one son, another kid on the way, and they were busy doctors. Well the most amazing woman came into our life (we call her Grammy) and with her, her husband.

He had an awesome personality. Always joking around. We'd play card games and he'd cheat just so we could catch him cheating and make a big deal out of it. At their house there was a linen bag in the pantry and he always kept it stocked with three of something ... candy, small toys, whatever. Whenever we went to their house my sister would run and check that. He built an amazing playhouse in the basement of our first house, and a little playground in the backyard of our second house. He would tell us scary stories, he showed me how to fold a burrito, just silly little things that will stay with me forever.

He unfortunately passed away when I was fifteen and it was a really rough year for me. I still think about him all the time and miss him a lot.

[propita]

My Dad died five years ago. His doctor found something unusual and wanted to monitor it, to see him again in six months. Six WEEKS later, Dad was gone. We assume, but don't know, that a biopsy pierced a small cancerous growth, allowing the cancer to grow and spread as he bled internally. I don't know if this is hooey since I'm not an oncologist.

Not knowing that he was dying--who thinks that?--I was impatient with him on the phone. I regretted that so much and held it inside for five years. Hubby finally had me talk about things when I just started falling apart emotionally and this came out. All my guilt. I still feel guilty but I'm not letting it eat me up as much.

Sorry, I couldn't see the screen for a minute there. Had to dry my eyes.

Anyway, Dad was a true gentleman. Everyone who knew him, upon hearing of his death said that exact word, "He was always such a gentleman."

I miss him terribly. No one understood me as well as Dad.

Gotta go. Now I'm crying.

[Rhubarbodendron]

{{{{{{Propita}}}}}} don't blame yourself. You had no way of knowing (after all, not even the doc knew) and everyone gets impatient with their parents now and then (and vice versa) - it's part of being a family. The important point is that you loved each other in spite of being impatient or annoyed at times.
Especially with your dad being a gentleman (a species of male on the brink of extinction in my experience), he wouldn't want you to feel guilty. What he would want for you is that you are happy and spread joy. He understood how you felt when you spoke on the phone with him and you surely didn't disappoint him then. Don't do it now.

[Lumi]

May all of our lost loved ones rest in peace. <3

[Tora Ziyal]

Wonderful thread. Thank you, TSQ.

[propita]

Thanks, Rhubarb.

[OdoWanKenobi]

My dad died on November 30th of last year. He was 58. He had diabetes, and refused to take care of himself. Eventually, his kidneys started failing. When he went into the hospital for tests, it was discovered that his heart rate was 32. So, what was already a problem turned into a bigger one. Suddenly, he was a heart patient. He was rushed into surgery to have a stent put in. Two weeks after he returned home, he passed away some time in the night. My mother, who works nights, returned home to find him. She believes he passed peacefully. I will never tell her this, but from the position of his body, I don't think he went as peacefully as she believes. He was lying sideways on the bed, as if he was woken up in pain, and sat up. The "soft smile" she saw on his face was probably rigor mortis. I'll always remember that day. The image of his pale, lifeless body is burned into my mind. What's more, since I was the closest person in the family to home, I was notified before anyone else. It fell to me to tell my brothers the news. My youngest brother took it the hardest. Another thing will stay in my mind is hearing him break down into tears over the phone. I have hardly ever seen him cry.

As I approach the one year anniversary of the event, the emotions that I feel are still so conflicted. My father was not a good person. He was rude, he was closed-minded, he was lazy, he was a bigot. I never got along with him. I more than once likened him to a Dementor from Harry Potter. When he entered a room, all of the happiness in it was instantly sucked out. I have so few memories of the two of us spending any actual quality time together. Most of my memories are of our fights. I can't bring myself to hate him, though. He was still my father. As much as we fought, as much as he angered me, I still always tried to reach out to him. I'm not sure he really knew how to relate to people, though. He never showed much interest in who I was as a person. He belittled me for the things I loved, mostly because they were not the things that he loved. He had a very narrow view of what was valuable in the world, and anything or anyone that did not fit into that view was worthless to him. As cold as it sounds, I don't miss my father. When I think about him, I lament the fact that we never could be close, more than I lament the fact that he is no longer in my life.

Sorry. I wrote a lot there, and none of it very happy stuff. It just helps me to talk about it, and get it off my chest.

[Dantheman]

Seven years ago this month, my older sister Amy died of heart disease. She was a beautiful, young woman with strawberry blonde red hair who everybody loved and could make you laugh.

Unfortunately, my mother took her death hard, her health declined, and six months later, died. It was like she died of a broken heart, like Padme in Revenge of the Sith. I just hope that they're together somewhere.

[doubleohfive]

Wow, in retrospect, this thread has made me realize it's been a tough couple of years for me in this department.

The first real major death in our family that I remember is my Aunt Marie. She was my dad's cousin, and sister of my Amou George (who I was named after.) Marie had suffered through a brutal case of breast cancer. I remember vividly the Friday morning when we got the call in 1991 that the cancer had finally won. She left behind two lovely daughters, my cousins, and their father. I don't think my Amou George ever really got over it, as their father had passed away when they were both very young, and about ten years after Marie died, their mother, (my great aunt) died also, leaving George the only one left from his immediate family. Here's a picture of George and Marie, shortly before her death when they came to visit us in Virginia:





In 2008, I lost two friends. The first, my mentor, friend, colleague and just an all-around good person, Anh-Thi Phan-Winkler, lost her battle with colon cancer. She'd been fighting it for roughly four years or so and left behind a beautiful son and a loyal husband who stood by her side through everything. She was only a few weeks older than me and we lost her at the too young age of 28, just weeks after her birthday. Here's a picture of her, with her son Christian.





In December of that year, another old friend from college, Tom Brown, was killed in action in Iraq. He and I had worked together in the admissions office when we were undergrads and he always had a kind comment or cheerful disposition whenever I saw him. When he graduated, he had originally joined the local police force but eventually found his way in to the Army. Even though I only knew him casually at work, we had some great times in that office and I think of him often. After I found out about his passing, I scrounged up an old video I'd shot with him and another friend during our admissions office days, which you can see here



Not long after that, I found out about another friend - Travis Hammond - who had passed away as well. He was 30 I think, and if I remember correctly, he died from complications of diabetes. Travis was a year ahead of me in high school. I'll never forget the first time I met him - on the blacktop parking lot at the school, on a hot August evening in Virginia as my friend Steve and I, nervous freshman and new to the band, were learning our marching steps for our marching band show. Unlike most of the other upperclassmen, Travis looked out for us that week. He might have laughed when the others did, but it was always more of a "ok, nice now here's how you REALLY wanna do it" kind of thing. He was also a law enforcement officer at the time of his death, and had just been admitted in to the FBI training school. He left behind a widow and adorable little son. Here's a pic of Travis:





In March 2010, you might remember me posting about my friend Katie. She passed away while traveling abroad from a complication from a car accident that led to an aneurysm. She went to bed with a headache and never woke up. She was 24. I think about her the most honestly. She was so bright and willful, happy (despite having a traumatic life) and just about the friendliest, most charming people I'd ever known. Here's one of my favorite photos of her:





My maternal grandmother passed away a few weeks ago. I haven't really told anyone about it mainly because I hadn't seen her in several years. She had been living in a retirement home and I know there had been some bad blood between grandma and my mom. Grandma was not an easy person to like or get along with and while she had her faults, she was always nice to me, even if she couldn't replicate that same behavior toward others (like my brother.) Still, I feel more guilty about not feeling bad about her passing than anything else. I worry more for my mom who might not have had the chance to try to resolve any of the issues they had developed over the years.


Lastly, just a few weeks ago I was perusing Facebook when a friend posted an old photo from our junior high days. I was surprised to find several old friends there, and greatly saddened to learn that one, Abby Burroughs, had also passed away several years ago, thanks to cancer. After some quick Google-fu, I found that Abby, her parents and family had set up the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs.

I'm sorry to say that I lost track of Abby after we went to our respective high schools and I didn't see her much after our 8th grade graduation. But I remember passing notes with her in science class and sitting with her at lunch in the cafeteria. She died on June 9, 2001 at the age of 21.

This is a video of her father promoting the cause the Abigail Alliance is championing: