Does the wish for a 'just kidding' ever go away?

[Trinaluce]

My sister was at school with one of the girls murdered in Northampton a few weeks ago. She said the overwhelming feeling at the school is just 'when is she going to text someone back and ask why everyone thinks she's dead?'

A friend of mine was killed in a car crash a year ago today. I still keep expecting her to log onto facebook just to say 'LOL Just kidding!'

My grandmother died 17 years ago. I STILL wait for a phone call to ask me to come to see her and have some tea and biscuits.

Does this ever stop, or do we spend the rest of our lives waiting for those that have already gone to jump out yelling 'SURPRISE!'?

trina my DH has lost 3 of his best friends. To this day, he is convinced that one of them didn't die the way it was reported (they never found the body either) and that he got taken away to be a spy becuase he was so ridiculously smart. I think it's coping mechanism, and I don't think it ever goes away. Sometimes we can just accept that someone's gone easier than other times. Maybe it depends on how sudden it is? How young/old someone is when they're gone?

Perhaps. My grandfather passed away last year at the age of 95 - no problem accepting that, he had a bloody good time of the long time that he had. For me and my sister I think it's the fact that the loss of our friends was so sudden and so amazingly UNFAIR (her friend was 18, mine was a week away from her 27th birthday).

I know what you mean - last year my cousin lost his wife, leaving two young children motherless, university friends lost their daughter in utero and most close to my heart my bil was diagnosed with terminal cancer which killed him 5 months later. I swear sometimes I think it's all a nightmare. This CANNOT actually have happened. I never ever want another New Years Eve like that - it was unbearable to hear people wishing each other a happy new year when I was so relieved to see the back of 2010 and so very frightened by 2011.

Everlong - my uncle was killed in a motorbike accident 37 years ago. My mum told me a few weeks later my grandma was getting the washing out of the machine when she just stopped and said 'if only he'd come home'. She never said anything like that before or since but I guess you just have to get used to spending your life waiting.

i thought this was just me. Although the feelings have come less frequently, I still sometimes find myself thinking "OK, enough of this, you can come back now"

Kind of reassuring to hear it's not just me who thinks/feels that

Me too! Today is 3 years since my little brother died and I found myself thinking he would walk in the front door this afternoon saying, 'sorry, it was all a mistake'. It is, as other have said, a coping mechanism because it's so ahrd to imagine the rest of our lives without them.

Honestly? No, it doesn?t.

My mum and brother were killed in a car accident when I was 7, I am now nearly 37, and am still waiting for my Dad to tell me that actually they just got divorced and decided to split us up (like in The Parent Trap). I was in the car accident, I have the scars, I remember being in hospital afterwards, I KNOW that it happened, but it doesn?t stop you wishing.