Another Classmate dead - Why do I weep?

I was just notified that an classmate from high school (Class of 66) has died of cancer. There was just a b'day party for him last year which I couldn't attend. Now he is dead.

Why do I sit here and weep. We were not that close in high school. He was well know and rather popular and I was hidden from view. Yet here it is, 45 years later, and I find tear in my eyes.
I have been making a serious effort to reconnect with people in my from my younger days. But still -- Is it simply fear of my own mortality, is it grief at the loss of a precious time in my life?
My wife also has cancer, though not advanced. I don't think I like this feeling at all.
Why have my emotions surfaced - where is the morose coming from?

 

I wish I had some answers for you but I dont. I sometimes feel bad about family and friends that did not make it this far, the lost potential life. Maybe thats whats upsetting you, anyway dont let it get you down to far. Hope you feel better.

 

Thanks man - compassion helps --

 

I think it may be just a realization of a passing of an era - an era of which you (and I) are a part. Someone from your childhood that you knew in the prime of their life has passed. That has to send messages to those of us who have more history than future.

On Aug 1st when I called my half-brother in Mississippi on his 40th B'day he told me that two of our first cousins had died in July. One was in his late '50s so we didn't hang much as kids, him being too young. But the other, Ronnie was just 3 years younger than me and we grew up together when I visited MS each summer.

Not that we were so close. We got into a fight as teenagers, when that three years gave me the advantage. Ronnie later stole one of our uncles pistols and was going to shoot me. Luckily it was found out and he was disarmed before he got back to me. So, my crazy hothead cuz died last month - still as a survivor, it is a milestone passed in my own life.

I last saw Ronnie in 1988.

 

I know exactly how you feel Ddoright. Since my husband passed in February, so many others have died. My daughter reckons he started a trend...he would have found that so amusing. I find myself thinking about them, even though some were merely aquaintances, perhaps because the mind remains young we don't think of the body growing old.

I wonder how their families are coping, we have gone through a seriously 'missing Jim' stage lately as it was this time last year that everything kicked off. So many memories are bitter sweet. There are so many stages in our lives and life can so often be a bitch, but I do like being alive...ever the opptomist.

Blessings to all.

 

We weep for our own mortality and for the passing of our youth. We thought it would never end.

A broken heart is surely the most insidious of medical conditions.