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AIBU?

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Original poster

To not understand how this can happen?

60 replies

PostKieron · 10/12/2025 16:05

I’ve just been thinking about things recently in the run up to Xmas - family life, family life when I was a kid etc .. just aspects of day to day life really.

Anyway - I was just thinking how in the 80s my mum had a really good family friend … we used to go and visit her house often - only a mile or so from ours - she used to make lovely coffee etc etc. I can remember in particular one lovely evening in June 1986 we spent in her house. Also my parents & I were invited to her daughter’s wedding in the summer of 1989 - it was lovely.

Anyway - I found out around a week ago that this lady has been dead over 25 years!! - since 2000 - and I never knew about it! She was my mums friend and my mum died in 1998 and I never saw this lady after that.

It’s just strange how our lives can dramatically change - this lovely wedding in the summer of 1989 - but within 11 years of that date BOTH my mum and this lady were dead … how it can go from this kindly lady giving me Easter Eggs etc as a kid to her being dead 25 years and me not knowing about it !

Anyone else feel their lives have changed dramatically over the years with massive changes in social relationships, habits etc?

OP posts:
Member869894 · 11/12/2025 05:37

I feel this too op. At 60 I have lost my parents and their friends who were the fabric of my childhood. The past seems so real but is non existent now and it saddens me when I think of it

Mapletree1985 · 11/12/2025 05:18

My life has changed dramatically so many times, I feel I've lived several lifetimes in one.

XWKD · 11/12/2025 05:11

I tried to keep in touch with my parents' friends after they died, but we didn't actually know each other that well. We still send each other Christmas cards, which is nice.

I am close to my own friends' children, and I think we'd stay in touch.

Franjipanl8r · 11/12/2025 04:48

I always feel nostalgic in winter and miss old relationships then. Maybe it’s the darker days that bring on melancholy.

Original poster
PostKieron · 11/12/2025 04:37

I’ve also recently been missing my grandmother who died in 1987.

I was brought up in a city and my grandparents lived in a very rural area 3 miles away. It was really ‘out in the sticks’ with not even a convenience store in easy walking distance - it wasn’t a village really just a hamlet with a small scattering of houses.

when my Nan died in 1987 when I was 14 my grandad came to live with us in the city - their house was rented so ties were mainly cut with my grandparents rural hamlet which had been a very regular part of my life up until that point

I missed this because despite being a very rural hamlet everyone was very much known and talked about.

after my nan died and my grandad lived with us we did have a few occasional visits from people who’d lived in the area. The city was 60 miles away.

OP posts:
bleakmidwintering · 11/12/2025 04:26

It’s only dramatic because you never made the effort to keep in touch op. Sorry to be blunt but we make choices that affect us down the line.

TonyTheImpala · 11/12/2025 04:25

LemaxObsessive · 10/12/2025 18:46

Gosh pools was such a massive scam! Trusting some random bloke and the main office’s staff that your entry would actually be entered and that you’d even be notified if you did win! My parents must’ve spent hundreds over the course of my childhood and they got bugger all from it.

Show quote history

I know what you’re saying but I remember my dad winning £900 on the pools in the 80s and us thinking we were rich!

TonyTheImpala · 11/12/2025 04:23

JudgeBreads · 10/12/2025 16:10

She died quite shortly after your mum who was her primary friend. It’s not very surprising that you didn’t know about her death. Not sure why you’ve made a thread in aibu about it. People grow up and change, it’s not an unusual occurrence.

Really? You didn’t get that OP is musing about something that impacts most of us? The passage of time and how the older we get the more we often reflect on how much things have changed and those who have gone? I think if you don’t feel this way and struggle with empathy in general, it’s probably best you don’t comment on threads like these.

Original poster
PostKieron · 11/12/2025 04:10

to give more context about my mum’s friend - after my mum died in summer 1998 - a few weeks after my dad announced he’d been at this family friend’s house to collect items she’d borrowed from my mother. My dad didn’t seem happy with my mum’s friend at this point judging from his tone when he spoke about her but didn’t outright insult her to me, or anything. But then around 18 months later my mum’s friend herself died.

OP posts:
Original poster
PostKieron · 10/12/2025 19:56

SeaAndStars · 10/12/2025 19:41

I know exactly what you mean OP.
When I look at our wedding photos now over half the people who were there are dead now. All those vibrant, full of life people with their own stories, jobs, hobbies and relationships. What ever happens to the space where they once were. I still feel that space.

DH, my friends and I are in our sixties now and when we talk about our home town we say things like, "You know where Long's Bags used to be, well over the road from there where the Old Greyhound pub was." In truth that area is all new student accommodation and the town that we knew then only exists in our memories now.

Yes that’s the thing - I think new student accommodation is rapidly becoming a feature of all city centres and many towns !

OP posts:
SeaAndStars · 10/12/2025 19:41

I know exactly what you mean OP.
When I look at our wedding photos now over half the people who were there are dead now. All those vibrant, full of life people with their own stories, jobs, hobbies and relationships. What ever happens to the space where they once were. I still feel that space.

DH, my friends and I are in our sixties now and when we talk about our home town we say things like, "You know where Long's Bags used to be, well over the road from there where the Old Greyhound pub was." In truth that area is all new student accommodation and the town that we knew then only exists in our memories now.

PlazaAthenee · 10/12/2025 19:15

post I have a milkman and a newspaper delivered a couple of times a week. It's very grounding, and timesaving.

We're in a large, crap town. Nowhere quaint or pretty 😁.

Confusednbemused · 10/12/2025 19:10

Abra1t · 10/12/2025 16:19

I’m making a big point of writing Christmas cards to my parents’ surviving friends this year, as they feel like a connection to the past i wouldn’t otherwise have.

This is really lovely :)

Dollymylove · 10/12/2025 19:09

LemaxObsessive · 10/12/2025 18:46

Gosh pools was such a massive scam! Trusting some random bloke and the main office’s staff that your entry would actually be entered and that you’d even be notified if you did win! My parents must’ve spent hundreds over the course of my childhood and they got bugger all from it.

Show quote history

Yes!!! My dad won some money on the pools and didnt get his money. Luckily one of his friends worked at the pools.company and he went back and sifted through everything, found his coupon. He won about £100 which in the 1950s was a big amount, and it went towards enabling my parents to buy a house 😀

LemaxObsessive · 10/12/2025 18:46

PostKieron · 10/12/2025 18:21

Also on Thursdays - the milkman and pools man came to collect their money - now there’s none of this 😭

And friendship groups that were once so tight and meaningful that my life revolved round them - no longer exist 😭

Gosh pools was such a massive scam! Trusting some random bloke and the main office’s staff that your entry would actually be entered and that you’d even be notified if you did win! My parents must’ve spent hundreds over the course of my childhood and they got bugger all from it.

workdilemma123abc · 10/12/2025 18:44

JudgeBreads · 10/12/2025 16:10

She died quite shortly after your mum who was her primary friend. It’s not very surprising that you didn’t know about her death. Not sure why you’ve made a thread in aibu about it. People grow up and change, it’s not an unusual occurrence.

Judge being in the name checks out then :D

Cabinqueen · 10/12/2025 18:43

My mum died when she was 53. Her best friend died some 20 years ago and I was unaware so missed her funeral. This autumn I met a woman who's the spitting image of her best friend and I told her so, and we both had a bit of a tearful moment. She had lost her best friend some 5 years ago and now we are in contact every two weeks... It's a very easy, reassuring, warm relationship and one I'm valuing more each time we speak. Life is strange.... 💐

Original poster
PostKieron · 10/12/2025 18:21

Also on Thursdays - the milkman and pools man came to collect their money - now there’s none of this 😭

And friendship groups that were once so tight and meaningful that my life revolved round them - no longer exist 😭

OP posts:
Original poster
PostKieron · 10/12/2025 17:55

MrBiscuits24 · 10/12/2025 16:58

Yes I sometimes feel like my childhood is someone else’s story. I feel such a disconnect

Yes I get EXACTLY what you mean here

OP posts:
LaurieFairyCake · 10/12/2025 17:23

All of my parents and all their friends have died now. When the last relative died I felt very alone, I felt it very keenly and I remember just standing stock still and weeping without being able to move for a few minutes.

MrBiscuits24 · 10/12/2025 16:58

Yes I sometimes feel like my childhood is someone else’s story. I feel such a disconnect

Peanutssuck · 10/12/2025 16:58

WaneyEdge · 10/12/2025 16:10

Dramatically isn’t the word I’d use but I know what you mean. Several of my parents friends and parents of my school friends have died in the last few years. Shops and businesses that had been there for years have gone. I feel a nostalgic sadness, I suppose.

People who I was such close friends with are now just occasional Facebook acquaintances. I remember parties we’d go to, weddings, christenings…and it’s gone now. And nothing has replaced it 😞.

This

Original poster
PostKieron · 10/12/2025 16:57

Monty34 · 10/12/2025 16:38

Society has changed. Social media now has changed how people communicate. And work has changed.
But it is so for each generation. It can be disconcerting, I agree. And you will feel nostalgic for those times that were less rushed, less frantic, when there was something steady about the world you lived in.

Yes I agree - something steady about the world lived in but also .. more cosy 😊

OP posts:
Monty34 · 10/12/2025 16:41

Arlanymor · 10/12/2025 16:35

I totally understand what you mean about nostalgic sadness - that wistfulness for what used to be. I've been watching Life Begins on Netflix as I love Caroline Quentin and I didn't see it the first time around. The fact that her character works in a travel agency took me way back to when I used to work in a news agency during sixth form and we used to know the other shops workers in our little mall so well... half of those shops are no longer there including the one I worked in as well as Our Price, Dixons, Woolworths, Past Times.

Gosh. Travel agencies. Going home with a load of brochures. Being able to flick through at the holidays. Add up the cost at the back. Simplicity. All gone.

Monty34 · 10/12/2025 16:38

Society has changed. Social media now has changed how people communicate. And work has changed.
But it is so for each generation. It can be disconcerting, I agree. And you will feel nostalgic for those times that were less rushed, less frantic, when there was something steady about the world you lived in.