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

[cardiologist349275]

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?

[Vandelay]

I often think of the boys - they were always boys - with ADHD or some other undiagnosed disability, or perhaps a horrific home life, who sat in the back of the class and were always in trouble for their behaviour and failing. I'm glad that society is beginning to recognise these things now rather than punish them.

[pucelleauxblanchesmains]

I'm also thinking of a lovely boy a few years below me at school, who I took some music lessons with and who died aged 14 of cancer after months of surgery and chemo. Still can't think of it without that howling sense of unfairness.

[ToastofLandon]

My friend from school died in a car accident. She was 5. About 6 months later my auntie died due to an undiagnosed heart condition which devastated my whole family.

I had to have some counselling recently for anxiety (unrelated), my counsellor believes that the route of my issues is because of those tragic events early on in my life. The memories of which do indeed haunt me and choke me up with sadness when I remember.

[Hedgesfullofbirds]

@EducacatingArti, yes, it was in Gloucestershire - would have been in 1974/75 when I was in 1st form. Do you possibly remember the same tragedy?

[pucelleauxblanchesmains]

This thread has reminded me of the poem "Tich Miller" by Wendy Cope.

[lilmishap]

@VanillaIce1

In secondary school in year 10 a girl had a boyfriend who was very controlling. The bastard set her house alight and killed her and her sister she was lovely. This happened in tooting in 2010.

I think I remember this there was a cousin from Nottingham or Leicester also involved and they were both asleep.

Horrific

[Comedycook]

You know what's really interesting about this thread is many of these tragedies were preventable....remember that if you're ever tempted to use the phrase "health and safety gone mad"

[ninnynonny]

[quote Kanaloa]@ninnynonny

I’m so sorry. What an awful situation and a horrible response from a teacher. I was often told ‘sticks and stones’ as a child but now as an adult I think it’s the opposite.[/quote]
It was very much the way then. Never complain. Never cry. This is what is happening. There's a long and not great story around it all, which I'm finally getting proper help for.

[newtb]

My best friend died when I was 11. It was just after they'd started using valium injections for tooth extractions, rather than gas. It meant that the dentist didn't have to pay for an anaesthetist to be there. Apparently she collapsed aarnd at the inquest the dentist, a private one, said that if he'd had another bottle of oxygen, he'd have been able to revive her. She had 2 sisters, 10 and 12 years older. I'd known her before I was 5, as I can remember her elder sister getting married. Her sisters had gone away to boarding school at 7, but she'd stayed home until 11.
The vicar was a friend of the family, and to make the funeral a celebration of life, they asked to have the choir. I'd been in the choir just about a year or so, and each time I looked up during the funeral I could see the coffin covered in flowers in the chancel, or if I looked to the right, I could see her parents, her sisters and their husbands, and other relations all of whom I knew. How I got through that service without crying I'll never know. Another girl in the choir had been at primary school with her. We just shed a few tears in the vestry when taking off our cassocks after it was over. It was in every local paper, and on the Sunday morning, the funeral was the Monday, in the vestry, the vicar announced that the funeral was the next day, and the family wanted the choir. Obviously the vicar had rung all the relevant head teachers and no-one was refused the afternoon off school. The men, most of whom were retired were lovely. No one said anything directly to us, but, personally I felt surrounded by people who cared. Her mum had several strokes and heart attacks, and was once found in the car in the garage with the engine running.
Her mum died 5 years later, and again, the family wanted to celebrate her life, and asked for the choir at the funeral. That time I was head chorister, so was directly in front of the family. It was so sad, a young life, she was just 14, wasted, and so many lives blighted, just because a dentist was too tight to have a spare bottle of oxygen in his surgery. In case. I've only had 1 tooth out since then, and I carried on going to the same dentist as I'd had before she died, even when living 50 miles away as he knew how I'd been affected by her death.
Even worse, even after 2000, I can remember Alan Beswick on GMR drivetime talking about yet another death for the same reason at a dentist's surgery following or during a tooth extraction. 30 years later, and nothing had changed.

[Alpacalunchbox]

At sixth form a girl in the year above died in a car crash on her way to pick up her A Level results. It has stuck with me 25 years later. That she would have been feeling so excited/nervous about her results. That she never got to find out what they were. The university space she never got to take up. And of course her poor family, friends and boyfriend.

[NeverDropYourMooncup]

I remember aged 6, the conversation about Nicola B, who was in the other class. She'd been off sick since before Christmas and we were told not to say anything to her when she came back because her baby brother had died of the Whooping Cough she'd caught at school. She looked so old, pale and drawn for a six year old and I could see she was really unhappy, but because we'd been told not to say anything, I thought that it meant we weren't allowed to talk to her at all. So she stood at the classroom window watching us play.

Then there was the boy who lived at number 9 who was in hospital for months with Tetanus. And the massive Measles outbreak followed by Mumps five days after we started back at school where he and his sister were the first ones off but were playing out every afternoon and would come up to talk to us - I remember the row my mother had with his when she started telling her that the reason I had been so ill (my eyesight was badly affected) was nothing to do with the Measles, but because my mother had let me be injected with poisons - vaccinations. I was quickly led away by one of the other Mums whilst the row continued - the last bit I heard was 'Aren't you satisfied with almost killing your own son...'. The woman never collected her children from school again - they had to walk by themselves.




DP is still affected by his best friend dying of meningitis. DP had been sent to school feeling awful because his father had said illness is all in the mind and refused to let him stay at home. He spent the day in Medical and then his best friend's Dad collected and drove the pair of them back after school. They found his friend dead three mornings later. What made it worse was that DP found out later that they had been offered the first meningitis vaccines but, along with TB, FIL had refused permission and convinced his Best Friend's parents to refuse as well.

[Cottonheadedninymuggins]

Remembered another, a lovely LOVELY lad who I went to secondary school with. He was really funny and a proper gentleman and one of the lads who everyone liked. He was a surprise baby to his parents with much older siblings and he was proper doted on as the baby of his family, especially by his mum who was lovely too!

His nephew was also the same age/same year/same school etc. His nephew was a nice lad but also a little bit naughty at the same time.

He went away on a lads holiday when we were 18 and died in a motorbike accident. His parents went through hell trying to get his body back over here. His nephew went properly off the rails and became a major criminal arrested regularly. Thankfully, now he's doing much better for himself and has his own business that he's built from the ground that the town is really supporting and he's turned that corner but it was touch and go for a bit as to whether the family would lose him too (he would overdose regularly).

[EducatingArti]

@Hedgesfullofbirds

At secondary school a boy, two years older than me, was hit on the head by a hockey ball, whilst playing in a home match against another school. He died that night in hospital from a brain haemmorhage. Still sticks in my mind 40 years later and I vividly recall his name, but won't mention it here

Was this in Gloucestershire Hedges?

[VanillaIce1]

The boy who did it saved a picture of her house burning down as his computer screen saver he was 15. Always freaked me out

[Tabbydancer]

This is a very painful thread to read

[VanillaIce1]

In secondary school in year 10 a girl had a boyfriend who was very controlling. The bastard set her house alight and killed her and her sister she was lovely. This happened in tooting in 2010.

[Peanutmnm]

Two guys I was in secondary school with. Their sister fell in a river and the bigger sister went in to save her. They both drowned. I think they were 5 and 6 or so. I'm still horrified at the pain the family must have suffered 30 years later.

[AuntMargo]

I am in my 50's - when at junior school in the 70's, a boy in my class, was dirty, smelt of wee and always had a green snotty nose. Our teacher sat him by himself between 2 large cabinets facing the wall away from everyone so no one looked at him. I was always sad for him and still think of him now.

[Whywonttheyletmeusemyusername]

These are heartbreaking

[Gargellen]

A 9yo lad from my class was knocked off his bike and killed the day he passed his cycling proficiency test
.

I can see his cheeky smile to this day and that was about 1973.

[WhatDidISayAlan]

The one that sticks with me is from when I was around 7 years old, so around 1979. We were eating our breakfast and heard a car screech outside on the main road. My mum legged it out of the house, and I remember her shouting at my dad to “take the children into the back room and call an ambulance”.

She ran back inside and I remember her running downstairs with a red blanket. Later in she told us that our paper boy had been run over and had been taken to hospital. What she didn’t tell us, and what I didn’t learn until I was an adult, is that he had died in her arms. He was 13. She also died early, but she and my dad never forgot him, and my dad always lit a candle at Mass when his anniversary came around.

[LemonJuiceFromConcentrate]

There was a boy I knew at high school in the 90s who was really bright, not “popular” but not unpopular either, kind of mildly geeky but with a great sense of humour. We sat together in Physics and got on well. I still remember conversations we had.

After graduation he surprisingly didn’t go on to college right away — turned out this was for financial reasons. After I had been away for one year myself, I bumped into him while I was home over the summer; we were both getting out of our cars in a supermarket car park. We randomly went for a coffee together and caught up. Turned out he had won a scholarship to a really prestigious liberal arts college (we were in the US) for the following year. I was so pleased for him.

But during that following year, at this fancy high-end college, he took his own life. I only found out through the grapevine and never learned what was behind it. I also only learned at that point that he had lived with his grandparents all throughout high school — no idea why, or where his parents were.

I still think about him. He would have been a really good man, I think. It would have gotten better if he’d only been able to hang on. Oh

[julieca]

Carol a girl I played with sometimes. She was not in school much, but quickly caught up when she was there and was one of the cleverest girls in the class. When she was 12 there was a rumour around the school she had an abortion. I never saw her again.
I remember thinking though her dad was the father of the baby.

[Aurorie11]

When I was in yr 6, the younger brother of a boy in my class was run over and died, the thing that sticks most in my head was the boys Dad had to put sand on his dead son's blood to avoid further accidents.
Another lad in my year when he was just turned 18 drove into the back of a dustbin lorry on a blind bend.
The girl when I was in 6th form in my tutor group went home unwell on Friday, had a phone call from form tutor the next morning she'd died of meningitis.
Unfortunately I could carry on listing

[AlmostAJillSandwich]

Little girl from my primary school and her whole family died in a fire, if i remember correctly it was arson :(