To not understand how this can happen?

PostKieron · 2025-12-10T16:05:40+00:00

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?

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 😞.

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.

monicagellerbing · 10/12/2025 16:16

I often think like this when I look at my wedding photos, full of people I don’t see anymore including old colleagues and even family. People who have died and those who divorced. Strange how you go from people being a huge part
of your life to never seeing them again

monicagellerbing · 10/12/2025 16:17

@JudgeBreadsNo need to be so snippy the OP was just musing. Jeez

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.

JudgeBreads · 10/12/2025 16:20

monicagellerbing · 10/12/2025 16:17

@JudgeBreadsNo need to be so snippy the OP was just musing. Jeez

So? I disagree with her that it’s a dramatic “how could this happen?” occurrence. My post has been “loved” by others so clearly not alone in this opinion.

DeathStare · 10/12/2025 16:26

I get it OP. My mum died suddenly in her early 60s just over a decade ago. By this point I was an adult with my own family.

We had lots of family friends who I have significant childhood memories with, who my mum was the one who kept in touch with them.

After she died we in the following couple of years we lost touch with several of them. I often wonder what happened to some of them.

Original poster

PostKieron · 10/12/2025 16:29

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 😞.

Yes it’s so right what you say about the shops and businesses closing down and changing - in my childhood neighbourhood we had when I was a kid

newsagents
greengrocers
butchers
hairdressers
general store
off licence

now it’s changed completely!

OP posts:

ginasevern · 10/12/2025 16:31

I know exactly what you're saying OP.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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

MrBiscuits24 · 10/12/2025 16:58

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

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.

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:

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:

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.... 💐

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

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.

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 😀

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 :)

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 😁.

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.