I wish I had never found out!

[Miababe]

I was listening to a famous celebrity talking about their school days and it reminded me of my ex who used to attend the same school. Curiosity got the better of me and I googled the school and past pupils in the school. When I put his name in the Memorandum page appeared and it said his name and the date he left the school and that he had died in 2015. I was very shocked as he would have only been about 52.

I have emailed the past pupil administrator with some details to make sure that it is him and am awaiting a reply. To make matters worse I saw that his best friend had also died in the same year but I was able to look him up as he was a famous photographer (sports) and he died of a heart attack so the 2 aren't connected I guess.
Its over 30 years since we dated and but I feel shocked and very upset by these findings. I had imagined him in the world somewhere with a family maybe and often think about him. My husband thinks it strange to be upset about this and weird to look into it further but I can't stop thinking about him.

I mean, I don't think it's necessarily strange to be upset about something like that, as it can often trigger difficult emotions, and maybe fears about your loved ones and your own mortality.
But it is likely to happen a lot more, and with people closer to you unfortunately.
I think perhaps it does sound like your a bit over invested in emailing for more details if it's someone you haven't been in touch with/thought much about over the years.

I can see why your DH finds it a bit weird to be honest.

Why?

Past pupil administrator? What?

Looking into it further and sending emails is something I’d find a little weird.

I mean you’ve had no contact with this ex for years, you don’t even have any mutual contacts (I’m presuming if you did you’d have heard about his death through them).

I’d maybe be curious as to how he died, was he unwell, etc, but not to the point that I’d go digging for info about him or his death. What are you going to do with the info if and when you get it?

It's not weird to be interested in the past and what people might be up to now.

However your DH probably feels that your main focus in life should now be your family and not random exs from the past.

Which is why he finds any over investment you might have in the past a bit weird - if indeed you are over invested.

Middleparking - like a past pupils organisation who hold events and dinners etc and network - was a posh private school.

I don’t think it’s weird. It’s someone you once cared about. Someone I worked with about 10 years ago died. He was a lovely man with a relatively young family and I didn’t know until I stumbled across a an item in a company newsletter. It was quite a shock and I thought about him a lot for a day or two.

I think it is natural enough to be upset when you find out someone you knew, is of a similar age to you, has died fairly young.

I suspect your husband finds you emailing the school off, not the upset. It is a bit unusual to do that, I think.

Sorry, initially I thought this was very odd, but I've just realised if he was 52 when he passed in 2015, you are 61 now so you would have dated during your twenties - that makes much more sense to me now, I initially thought you were saying you 'thought often' of a boy you dated during school, so a minor teenage romance over 40 years ago, which would have been odd, but I'm guessing you dated for a long time into your twenties? I can see why this would rattle you a bit, those are formative years - i also find that sometimes 'minor' bereavements hit us harder than 'major' ones, it's like the grief finds a different settling point - and of course this one was a shock to you, unlike a lot of bereavements.

It's not strange to feel shocked/sad but I think the follow up with the school is, rather.

Semperldem - thank you. I was emailing the school because it is very big and he had a fairly common name and although it fits with the year he left the school I wanted to be sure. I dated him for nearly 4 years and socialised with his best friend as well.

I identified the school fairly quickly from what you’ve posted. God, how the other half live. I don’t know if any of our school staff would’ve blinked if you’d dropped dead in front of them, let alone decades later.

It's a shock when you realise that people of your own generation are dying of natural causes like heart attacks. Brings home your own mortality and that you are now of an age where this sort of thing can happen....

Middleparking - lol, mine too. My ex was pretty down to earth though and could laugh at all the pomp.

I had a sort of similar experience where I found out through my old school alumni magazine that my 6th form boyfriend had taken his life in his early 40s after a decade of ulcerative colitis, leaving behind a wife and two very young children.

I wouldn't have known otherwise, and it bothered me for the longest time as his own mum died when he was young and I couldn't have imagined him voluntarily depriving his own kids of a parent. Plus he was so robustly heathy as a teenager that it was hard to imagine the illness.

SummerinSun - it certainly does. When I knew him he was in his 20s smoked about 5 a day, played no sport or exercised really and was an accountant sitting all day. Though not overweight.

Batshitistheonlyexplanation - that is really sad. I'm sorry to hear about your 6th form boyfriend and with a young family as well. Suicide with youngish men is not unheard of is it sadly. It does bother us and its hard because they are not really ours to grieve but I have found it has triggered all sorts of memories of him and me and early 40s and 50s are young to die and cause so much pain.

Foxblue - thank you. I think you are right it's the shock really and his friend as well. He was older than me I am 58 but we dated for years in our 20s as you say.

Wickedlycharmed - I don't know just wanted to clarify it was him as i was shocked I suppose and also when I saw his best friend had died the same year I wondered if it was an accident that had happened together. Just a knee jerk reaction I think. He was a lovely person I hoped he was living a good life.

I was like this when I lost my dear friend Denzil. He died of a heart attack, I lost touch with him but when we worked on the same job and he was lodging by work I used to meet up with him after work a couple of evenings a week. Nothing romantic with it at all, just platonic. We lost touch then one day I remembered his address where he used to live in Shropshire and googled it and saw a Solicitors death notice attached to the property. It was very sad. The same year I lost another friend who I used to ride out with - we both had horses on the same yard. The following year I had a male friend that I hung out with for about five years as a teen/early twenties, he died in hospital. Then a fourth friend died unexpectedly, she had MS but fell down some stairs suffering a cardiac arrest, and died on the spot. Very sad, all these people were not much older than me, two were younger than me. It came as a real shock.

In the case of the two men who died I followed up as many google leads and facebook leads as I could to try and find out what had happened, its natural curiosity to do so, I've been with my partner 24 years but its nothing to do with that side of my life anyway, these people were entirely separate.

Hickory247 - So sorry to hear about all those loses for you must have been devastating as they kept shocking you.

Thank you. It came as a massive shock as two died in the same year, my friend in Shropshire I was particuarly close to, we were like brother/sister, we confided in everything, I knew him inside out and he knew me too. We used to eat out once a week at a local pub and go and see my horse and I taught him to ride him too. He was a natural. I think my pen friend who had MS was the biggest shock though, I'd met her a few times in real life and she was such a lovely person, and her death was just a fluke.

Hickory247 - I can imagine flukes or accidents must be very hard to grieve as it seems senseless. Has this experience changed you in anyway? Do you value your own time/life more?

I lost contact with an extra boyfriend of mine after we split up. I know he got married and the area he lived. I imagined him being happy and maybe cutting back on the drinking and smoking. I saw that his mother had died and imagined perhaps they moved to her house. I was doing some family tree stuff on Ancestry and checked his details, I was shocked to find he does about 10 years ago. I just felt very sad that I have a life and enjoy doing things we did together, like horse racing and now he has been dead for years and can’t do anything. Sorry I’d that sounds strange but it feels so odd to me he isn’t in the world anymore.