Friends who have died...

[Darth_Pinche]

For some reason today, I really felt loss for a friend who was killed over 18 years ago. He was a passenger in a car who was hit when another driver ran a red light. Chad was one of my best friends and in many ways still is. We went to Trek conventions together with another great friend who also posts here. I made peace with his death a long time ago and his passing was an inspiration for many of the great things I've done in my life. But sometimes it really enrages me that he missed out on so much. He would have been an avid member of this community and was just a fantastic soul who was taken when his life was just really beginning. Just had to vent and I guess bring him into this community in some way.

I was just wondering if others have lost fellow trekkies and open an opportunity for people to share about these great people who are now gone.

Chad, I know your legacy lives on in the many lives you touched.

 

[Lindley]

When I was little my family hosted a kid a couple of years older than me from the Bronx, as part of the Fresh Air Fund program. He visited us each summer for several years. Then one night my mother woke me up and told me that he'd been killed by a stray bullet from a gunfight he was in the wrong place at the wrong time for.

My general dislike of New York City was pretty much cemented after that.

More recently, I heard that a guy I went to school with died of an overdose. I didn't really know him at all in recent years, but I have vague memories of visiting his house a lot when I was little because his family had a pool.

 

[Haytil]

But sometimes it really enrages me that he missed out on so much.

That's really one of the most unfair things about death, especially untimely deaths.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

I lost a close friend to cancer a few months ago. To see him get weaker with each passing day was really painful. The docs gave him six months. He lasted less than one. I miss him.

 

[Kirby]

A girl that I had a crush on in elementary school died the summer before 5th grade, I heard later that she may have had a crush on me as well. This asshole grabbed her when she was alone and strangled her. Fortunately they found him pretty quick and he's been locked up for 30 years... I think this has screwed me up and has stayed with me for a very long time.

I had a friend in college who had epilepsy and died of a seizure during a period when they were experimenting with the dosage of his meds.

RIP Michelle and Rich, I miss you both.

 

[sidious618]

I had a teacher, who was in a way my friend, pass a while back. I actually wrote about it somewhere recently in an anecdote I was telling (well, emailing) to someone:

As for a funny story? Well, back in the seventh grade I could do a damn good impersonation of the voice of the woman from the school office. She would come over the loudspeaker and ask for so and so to come down because of some nonsense. Well, during English class one time I covered my mouth and did the impression, asking for one of my classmates to go down. “Oh,” said the teacher. “You better get down there.” I did this constantly (the student would never leave, though, and would be thoroughly confused). He caught on eventually and laughed. “You’re a crazy man!” he told me. I cannot argue with that. He was a good teacher and really taught me how to write well in essays. I told him how much I appreciated that and how he was one of the best teachers I’d ever had at the end of the year. He thanked me with tears in his eyes and said I was one of his favorite students. I had no idea why he had tears in his eyes at the time. When I came back next summer we were told he had died from kidney failure. I imagine he knew he would not be back and I am so happy I got to tell him how much I liked him before he went. I miss him to this day. In the end, I guess this was not such a funny story.

 

[Philo]

Beautiful post, Darth Pinche

When I was seventeen, one of my best friends was killed when she was hit by lightning. Her name was Anya Brebner. We had had a falling out a while before, and I had just learned a month beforehand that her mother had died of cancer. At the time, my father was terminally ill and I had been putting myself in a headspace preparing for that, so it was that on top of everything else that made it especially shocking. It put a lot of things in perspective for me, and there isn't often a day that goes by that I don't think about her. She was an incredibly beautiful person. I wouldn't be the same person if I hadn't known and lost her.

Similarly, the shooting at Dawson College here recently affected me really strongly. I didn't know anybody there personally, but I was within a couple of blocks when it happened, and I think it allowed me to release some of the pain about Anya and my father that I'd carried with me. Luckily, only one person was killed but I told myself I would never forget her name. Anastasia DeSousa.

I dedicate my life to both of them.

 

[Hoser]

I had a friend in college. He seemed normal, and went home for a weekend and swallowed a shotgun.
I went to his funeral. It's just one of those things you never get over.

 

[Lindley]

I had a teacher, who was in a way my friend, pass a while back. I actually wrote about it somewhere recently in an anecdote I was telling (well, emailing) to someone:

As for a funny story? Well, back in the seventh grade I could do a damn good impersonation of the voice of the woman from the school office. She would come over the loudspeaker and ask for so and so to come down because of some nonsense. Well, during English class one time I covered my mouth and did the impression, asking for one of my classmates to go down. “Oh,” said the teacher. “You better get down there.” I did this constantly (the student would never leave, though, and would be thoroughly confused). He caught on eventually and laughed. “You’re a crazy man!” he told me. I cannot argue with that. He was a good teacher and really taught me how to write well in essays. I told him how much I appreciated that and how he was one of the best teachers I’d ever had at the end of the year. He thanked me with tears in his eyes and said I was one of his favorite students. I had no idea why he had tears in his eyes at the time. When I came back next summer we were told he had died from kidney failure. I imagine he knew he would not be back and I am so happy I got to tell him how much I liked him before he went. I miss him to this day. In the end, I guess this was not such a funny story.

I had a really nice Latin teacher in middle school who died my last year there. Everyone liked him. One trimester he randomly decided that he was going to teach ancient Greek rather than Latin, which was....interesting. The guy they replaced him with really seemed like he was stumbling around by comparison.

I've never been any good at languages, but I still remember to the syllable a Latin poem that we had to memorize in that class in 6th grade.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I was just wondering if others have lost fellow trekkies and open an opportunity for people to share about these great people who are now gone.

I have lost four close friends in my life but none of them were trekkies. There were

Susan - died of a hole in the heart when we were both 11. She had been excited about the upcoming first walk on the moon but died before it happen. I remember that, as Armstrong stepped onto the moon, I wished Susan had been there. Since that day I often think of her when I see the moon.

Mark - died at 17. The brother of my then boyfriend. He was a terrific kid. He was killed by a hit-and-run driver and left to die on the street alone. We believed that it was a deliberate act by a person who didn't like him. That person was convicted of his manslaughter.

My youngest son Marcus is named after Mark.

Christine - the best friend I ever had. We were friends for years. She died during an epileptic fit when she was 37.

Dianne - died of a heart attack when she was 52. I was angry at her when she died as she had had two previous heart attacks but made little effort to change her lifestyle. She weighed 145 kilos when she died.

 

[sbk1234]

When I was a kid in elementary school, there was a kid, Ricky. He was the type who was always getting into trouble, being an unsuccessful class clown. Most people - including myself just avoided him, and didn't think much of him. A few years later, he and I ended up in a math class together in junior high. We started talking. It turned out we had a lot in common. Back then, it was an interest in Battlestar Galactica. Every once in a while he came by my house to just hang out. I soon realized that Ricky was really a nice kid, but often - for reasons I never really had a chance to find out - just hung around some real bad influences.

One Monday at school, the word started spreading really quickly that Ricky had committed suicide over the weekend.

He and I never really became good friends. I like to think that if given the time we could have. But I do like to remember him. There was a lot of good in him that never really had a chance to come out. It's really a shame.

Ricky really was a nice kid.

 

[Darth_Pinche]

While is like anyone can get down sometimes, mostly I smile and openly laugh when I think of my friend Chad. I remember having a drink with my good friend and mutual friend of Chad's, celebrating his memory. I then started laughing and said "I bet that frakker already knows who the fifth cylon is!"

As long as we keep their memories alive in how we lead our lives, they will be eternal.

 

[Philo]

Yes, exactly.

 

[WillsBabe]

My friend Sarah died of suicide several years ago. I miss her a great deal and I think about how young she was when she died and what she would have been like now, if she had lived to have been in her 40's. She would have been an old lady like me rather than forever having died young.

My friend Val, who was a great inspiration to me, died just before Christmas last year. She died of breast cancer. I miss her wisdom, her smile and her spirit.

The death of friends brings a different kind of grief to the death of parents and family members; it hurts in a different way.

 

[Philo]

^ It does. It's hard to describe (and probably shouldn't be), but it does.

 

[Pegaritaville]

It's hard to believe it's been seven years, but that's when I lost one of my best friends. She was only 27, but she died of an undiagnosed congenital heart problem. That was a tough one for me- not only because she was a close friend, but because she died on my living room floor. I was in a total panic when I called 911, and even though I was EMT trained, I felt useless. Later I was told that she wouldn't have made it no matter what, but it still bothers me at bit. I think about her often, and when I do, it almost always brings a smile to my face. She was a two thumbs up kind of gal. Cheers, Christy! Here's looking up at ya!

 

[RJDiogenes]

I'm sorry for everybody's losses.

They weren't Trekkies, but I've lost a couple of friends, and several acquaintances, to cancer.

 

[ITL]

About a year ago I heard that an old friend that I hadn't seen for years had killed himself. Still trying to get to grips with that, to be honest. I have no idea if he was a Trekkie - and to be honest, it doesn't matter whether he was or wasn't.

 

[Outpost4]

I have lost two close friends, one to cancer and other to suicide, but neither of them were Trekkies. To the OP's point, last week I mentally said goodbye to a close Trekkie friend who is deeply into crack addiction. I am now prepared to speak well of him at his funeral. He will either kill himself through the drugs or suicide. He has threatened the latter. In fact I checked him in over the weekend to a local psych ward because he was threatening to kill himself. The doctors let him out a few days later with a change in his anti-depressant medication. Within 12 hours he was back to using crack.

 

[RandyS]

When I was little my family hosted a kid a couple of years older than me from the Bronx, as part of the Fresh Air Fund program. He visited us each summer for several years. Then one night my mother woke me up and told me that he'd been killed by a stray bullet from a gunfight he was in the wrong place at the wrong time for.

My general dislike of New York City was pretty much cemented after that.

I've never had much love for New York in general, but this news has me worried. A good friend recently moved TO the Bronx.