To not understand how this can happen?

[PostKieron]

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?

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I recently found out that my closest school friend’s mum died during COVID. I know it’s nowhere near as long but she was such a huge personality, it feels weird to think that the world kept spinning without her on it.

Now that I have kids I often think back to the days when we’d all sit around my grandparents’ kitchen table - us kids, my parents and grandparents, gibber-gabbering, drinking coffee and juice, the place so loud you couldn’t hear yourself talk. Now both grandparents are dead and the house is long sold. The same spark can never be recaptured and I never knew in the moment that I’d look back on those moments and long for them.

I don't like going back to my hometown for this reason. Mid 40s.

Old schools demolished, shops for rent, pubs closed down, high street empty. Friends moved away.

Like a ghost town, full of memories with people who no longer exist. Only my parents getting older and less independent in the house we moved into when I was in primary.

I really have to psyche myself every time.

Evety generation sees their lives change and their friends die. It can be a horrible feeling to realise it, but it is also something pretty much all of us experience in some way or another.

It’s a strange feeling isn’t it. When you remember someone from the last time you saw them and imagine them to still be living their everyday life only to find out they’ve died. My childrens head teacher was brilliant and I really liked her. She and her husband both retired just as my youngest left primary school and she talked about all their plans they had. Fast forward 8 years and both were dead from cancer. He died three years after retirement and she 7 years. All the while I thought they had been having a wonderful time together doing all the things she had mentioned but in fact they had both been plagued with illness and passed away. I still think about them now. I can remember being so shocked when I found out.

I don't really go back these days, because I can totally relate. My mum also had another fall recently and is suddenly her age, when she always seemed younger. It's hard.

I hear you OP - know exactly what you mean.

I often think, when I see people buzzing around, busily getting on with their lives, that in fifty years none of this will matter. We all go about like we’re important and have important things to do, causing ourselves stress and anguish in the process.

In fifty years, we and our busy, “important” lives won’t matter. We will die, and people who used to be important to us (and vice versa) won’t even know.

I totally understand how you’re feeling, OP, and I often wonder whether a good message for the younger generation would be: “Enjoy yourself, slow down, and don’t put massive importance onto people/places/careers, etc., as all too soon, none of that will matter.”

Is life all about being rational and pragmatic for you? How sad. Just because you are not interested in or don't understand the issues and feelings that op is raising doesn't mean that the thread isn't important and interesting for others.

I also often ponder on the fact that we only really own a home for a passage of time. We are just passing through and then it becomes someone else’s home. My house was built 200 years ago and I thinking the previous ‘owners’ that lived here and I look around and there’s no evidence of them ever being here but at one time they thought of this house as theirs.

@Milliemoons
I know it’s nowhere near as long but she was such a huge personality, it feels weird to think that the world kept spinning without her on it.

Perfectly put. Just how does the world keep spinning, especially without a wobble to let us know something major (to us) has happened

Edit - apologies, I meant to clear the quote before posting but I can't in edit.

ah yes very interesting musings - the very first line of your post is something I’ve often thought about

Sorry ALL - my past LONG post when I start talking about my grandmother should read - they lived

60 MILES AWAY NOT 3!!!!!!

Thats quite an important typo and I can’t edit !!

Yes I definitely feel the descent into Xmas makes us muse like this

I still feel shocked sometimes that my parents are dead, their stories are ended. Their deaths aren’t recent but they feel like yesterday in many ways and quite unbelievable. In fact a few weeks ago I woke up from a dream in which I’d been feeling guilty that I hadn’t visited my mum for ages, and the feelings were so real that I had to ask my husband if she was alive or dead.

i also feel shocked whenever I think of how old their friends are that I still see, because my parents obviously haven’t aged so my memories are sort of stuck- a bit like when you don’t see your friends’ kids for a couple of years and they grow up and change so much, the aging process after 70 seems to do similar to people in terms of changing.