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AIBU?

Random tragic memory found in my old diary **Content Warning** Title edited by MNHQ

335 replies

cardiologist349275 · 04/12/2021 15:36

Sorry this isn't an AIBU but I didn't know where to put this. I was going through 20+ years of diaries and came across a story my mum told me before she died.

There was a little girl who went to school with my brother. She had a brain tumour. She was extremely unwell but still went to school every day, and one boy was always bullying her and pushing her over in the playground and she would cut her knees open all the time. The teacher was also a nasty bully (this was the 80s so she got away with it for years) and was very cruel to the girl because she had to wear trousers because she couldn't cope with a skirt, but she found the trouser buttons really hard to do up and the teacher would pick on her about it and not help her. She died on the day of the school play aged five.

My Mum was haunted by it and never forgot that little girl who she said was so, so sweet.

To add to the family's tragedy, their other daughter sadly suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and had to live in sheltered accommodation. One day about ten years ago the mother went to visit her, not knowing the daughter was having an episode and had snuck a knife into the flat. She was stabbed to death.

Though I never knew any of these people, I think of them often. Their tragedy has been lost to time, but I think if I remember them then they won't just be....gone.

Does anyone else have any memories of other people that come back to them in a haunting way?

OP posts:
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Didiplanthis · 04/12/2021 15:39

My friend died when we were 6. I can still hear her laugh as we played on the swings, in my head every so often.

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Didiplanthis · 04/12/2021 15:39

I'm 47.

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ninnynonny · 04/12/2021 15:40

There was a little girl at my primary school called Jenny who had both legs in calipers. I have no idea what it was she had but always wondered. She was such a jolly girl - never in my friendship group but just really lovely.
Ona nasty note, I was horribly bullied because I had a visible difference and I will never ever forget or forgive a girl called Verity who got a gang together and encircled me chanting my disability out loud. It still affects me 45 years later.

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rrhuth · 04/12/2021 15:40

Yes I knew a family when very young who had very difficult circumstances and sometimes I think of them. I don't remember their names or anything but they had an impact because life was visibly tough, the child was a young carer. I think it was the first time I saw how randomly unfair life can be, it stuck with me.

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ninnynonny · 04/12/2021 15:43

Two others come to mind. A teenage boy at secondary school, two years younger, who had bone cancer and had his leg amputated - I have no idea what happened to him; and a girl in my year who was killed being dragged under the school bus one day. Awful.

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Latenightreader · 04/12/2021 15:48

The sister of a girl at my village primary school drowned off the Norfolk coast when she was three or four. Her sister was a few years older than me and she was younger so I didn't know either of them apart from by sight, but I remember her grave in the churchyard and being awed by the sadness of it all.

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ToykotoLosAngeles · 04/12/2021 15:53

A little boy in my class at primary called Nathan. We were told he had a "hole in his heart". He died before he reached his teen years. I still think about him and I'm 37.

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PonderingTotskeit · 04/12/2021 16:01

My school friend Christopher. Accidentally shot on his dads small holding by another older friend. Not sure if he died straight away but I remember my grandad reading it out from the weekend paper because it was local. When I went to school on Monday he wasn’t there, and the teacher asked if anyone knew where he was and I think I said what I knew but I am sure they all thought I was bonkers. But it was real.

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Shortpoet · 04/12/2021 16:05

@ninnynonny

There was a little girl at my primary school called Jenny who had both legs in calipers. I have no idea what it was she had but always wondered. She was such a jolly girl - never in my friendship group but just really lovely.
Ona nasty note, I was horribly bullied because I had a visible difference and I will never ever forget or forgive a girl called Verity who got a gang together and encircled me chanting my disability out loud. It still affects me 45 years later.

Did we go to same primary school? Town beginning with F?
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Eloisedublin123 · 04/12/2021 16:08

These are very moving memories

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Whosthebestbabainalltheworld · 04/12/2021 16:09

A neighbouring boy called Des Murphy. He was more a kid I knew than a friend. He joined the French foreign legion when he was 17 or 18 and was killed shortly afterwards. I often think of him and how sad his parents must have been.

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PissedOffNeighbour22 · 04/12/2021 16:10

My friend died when she was around 9 or 10. She stepped into the road as a car was coming and as she tried to get back to the pavement she slipped and banged her head on the kerb.
We didn't go to the same school so weren't close friends as I knew her through her family members, but it affected me a lot. I remember going to her memorial service and it was horrible to sit through.

I still think of her often.

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CPL593H · 04/12/2021 16:11

I can't remember most of the names of my junior school friends (50+ years ago) but I have never forgotten one boy. He had bright blond hair, was abnormally skinny and wore clothes that were TBH rags, frankly. It was the classic (horrid) situation, no one would sit next to him as he smelled so bad. He had a terrible stutter and would get very frustrated and angry at times, thus got slippered more than most. He was generally so anxious to please, though and any sign of kindness or friendship was pounced on and he would light up. When we changed for PE the bruising on his back and arms was awful.

Looking back, there was clearly an absolutely Dickensian level of abuse and neglect going on and there is not a social services department in the country, however poor, that wouldn't have been out like a shot today. As far as I could see, nothing at all was done, his situation certainly remained the same all the time we were there. He haunts me a bit and I hope with all my heart that he went on to have a great life. I have my doubts, sadly.

I'm sorry for what you went through, Paul.

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elp30 · 04/12/2021 16:12

I remember a boy who sat next to me in my class in year four (aged nine). He was always so sweet but very quiet.

I remember that he was absent from school one day and when I watched the television, I learned that my classmate's father was killed. The father was an abusive violent alcoholic who used to beat his wife and my classmate stabbed his father to death after his father beat his mother.

It's been 42 years since that happened and I've never forgotten my classmate and I am always deeply sad that no one knew what he and his mother went through at the hands of his father.

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Starcaller · 04/12/2021 16:12

Andrew, a boy in our secondary school. Hung himself during Easter holidays. A popular, smart boy, plenty of friends. It still seems so unbelievable 20 years on.

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Nsky · 04/12/2021 16:13

I recall at my secondary school in the country, someone announcing a boy had been killed , knocked of his bike doing a paper round, tragic

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Kanaloa · 04/12/2021 16:14

@ninnynonny

There was a little girl at my primary school called Jenny who had both legs in calipers. I have no idea what it was she had but always wondered. She was such a jolly girl - never in my friendship group but just really lovely.
Ona nasty note, I was horribly bullied because I had a visible difference and I will never ever forget or forgive a girl called Verity who got a gang together and encircled me chanting my disability out loud. It still affects me 45 years later.

So they all stood round you shouting out what your disability was? How disgusting Angry

I do seem to remember playgrounds being largely unsupervised when I was younger, compared to my kids playground which has playtime supervisors. They’ve always been fantastic especially with my son who is autistic. They’ve supported him to join in games etc. I couldn’t imagine something like this happening although I imagine it still does! People can be just so awful.
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GoodnightGrandma · 04/12/2021 16:15

My mum befriended a lady who moved into a house near to us. One of her daughters had leukaemia. When she died I was given a toy cot she had. I never played with it. It was the first death I knew of, and she was about 7 years old. I often think about it.

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moonlight1705 · 04/12/2021 16:20

@elp30

I remember a boy who sat next to me in my class in year four (aged nine). He was always so sweet but very quiet.

I remember that he was absent from school one day and when I watched the television, I learned that my classmate's father was killed. The father was an abusive violent alcoholic who used to beat his wife and my classmate stabbed his father to death after his father beat his mother.

It's been 42 years since that happened and I've never forgotten my classmate and I am always deeply sad that no one knew what he and his mother went through at the hands of his father.

That's an utterly heartbreaking story, thatvpoor boy and what he went through to get to that stage.
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Ludoole · 04/12/2021 16:20

My son had a best friend who died from a brain tumour aged 5. Telling him his friend had died was horrible. He was an incredibly clever, polite little lad and my old diaries said he would have changed the world. Such a waste of a charming, clever, beautiful soul.

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tillytoodles1 · 04/12/2021 16:20

My son's school friend died of cancer in his teens. He had two younger brothers and one stabbed the other to death in a stupid row. He went into wherever they place young offenders, and their poor mum lost all three sons in just over a year

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COL1N · 04/12/2021 16:21

When I was about 16 my friends older brother died, it was my first experience with death & at a sensitive age it really impacted me. I always remember that my friend had been named after a character from a childrens book, on the request of their older brother. I now read that book to my daughter & always think of them x

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SelfHelpPlease · 04/12/2021 16:21

There was a girl in my year at school, who was very sweet. We'd shared a room on a residential trip 6 months earlier. She was dragged under a bus in Highbury and Islington whilst we were on work experience. She was only 15. It was tragic, its stayed with me since and I always think of her on the anniversary of her passing and often wonder what she would be doing at this stage in her life. 💔

It put things into perspective for me at such a young age, knowing that we could be here one day but not the next. I couldn't get my head around that just 6 months earlier, we were having a great time and she was sharing her snacks with me. Sad

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NoddingTulip · 04/12/2021 16:22

2 children at my school one in year above me and the other bellow so they would have been around 6&8yrs old. 5geir parents were separated and one weekend when they were with their dad the 3 of them were found dead, locked in the car engine running and hose pipe through the window. I only knew the older one vaguely from choir practice, but I was deeply moved by it all but not understanding how or why, but thinking their dad was an awful horrid man.
I remember the remembrance assembly at school so much and the dress up day we had to raise money for a bench and tree in the playground to remember them.
I often think of the children and their poor mother. As I grew I was able to have a little sympathy for their father and the head space he must have been in to carry out something like that, but my heart will always go out to their mother and I only hope she has managed to find some sort of peace with the tragedy of loosing both her children.

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HPFA · 04/12/2021 16:24

My grandmother (back in 1910) won a scholarship to Manchester High School. She didn't make many friends - she came from a poor area, didn't even have the right uniform. But she said there was a nice girl - Lucy, a doctor's daughter. She died of diptheria.

Over a hundred years ago, but Lucy's existence is not totally forgotten.

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