Good bye we hardly knew you...

[Josephine96]

I am a little sad today guys.. There was a woman who was no more than 24-25 years old it appeared. She was working at the rehab center where my mother currently is..

Well.. Wednesday was her last day and she seemed to be the only 1 I could talk too about certain things..Even though I hadn't known her that long..

So here's the main focus of this topic guys.. Have you ever known somebody or become friends with somebody only to have them not be around long enough for you to build a better friendship..?

Maybe the person died or found a better job or any other way they just mysteriously disappeared..

I thought this would be a good topic.. that's why I wrote it

[GalvestonDuck]

Ironic that you posted this.

I was just visiting with some higher-ups here at the hospital (we were invited for a luncheon) and I was talking with someone in her office. I noticed an announcement on her bulletin board with a picture of one of the admin directors and below it said "A celebration of the life of...." I had to replay what I had just read in my mind a second time, because usually that applies to a memorial service when someone dies, right? I pointed to the picture and gave her a questioning look. Then, still sort of shocked, I said, "When? What happened?" The person who died was around my age (give or take a couple of years) and I had just seen her a couple of months ago. They told me that she committed suicide. I'm shocked because apparently she was in remission with cancer (another something I was in the dark about). No one really knows why, but apparently she took an overdose of pills on 2/22.

It's sad because although I didn't know her well, we always smiled and greeted each other in passing. I feel bad because it makes me wonder if I or someone else had seen her during this darkest time in her life, could we have recognized the signs and helped her?

But since I just now found out, everything is already as final as final can be. And I hate that for her.

[Josephine96]

Awww.. I'm sorry that happened Duck.. I thought this would be a good topic.. that's why I posted it..

I am trying to learn the lesson of cherishing all the people you come in contact with because you really never know how long they will be around..

[streetsoldier]

The person I miss the most is my counselor/friend, Shelley; she was a wonderful Christian MSW/LPC who asked tough questions, to which I supplied equally tough answers, and over the two years we had sessions, she became a VERY good friend to me, and to coppertop as well.

Her Christian-based counseling could have gotten her fired at any time, but her clients loved her...eventually, she lost most of her clients when the State, in its infinite wisdom (?) ordered a denial-of-service to anyone who didn't have an HMO.

She left soon afterwards...that was two years that have passed since I last talked to her. I have no idea where she is, what she's doing or in which capacity...but I do miss her.

[Josephine96]

Aww Street.. There are several people I miss too.. that I didn't get to know as well as I could have.. That's the main reason I brought up this topic

[azskyman]

As they years pile on, I remember some times exactly as you describe. Here for but a short time and cut short for one reason or another.

War has a way of making that even more pronounced.

In 1970, I arrived in Vietnam to a host of people from back in "the world" who then became my best friends, most counted-on comrades, and often seemed like family. Some of them left shortly after I arrived. Some were best friends for weeks or months. Each was someone we came to count on to watch our backs, to make us laugh, to help us through Dear John letters, and to lean on when we were scared or lonesome or tired of it all. But each and every one...all of them...left to go back to the states...most always on different days than another...and most always alone and waving goodbye and giving thumbs up to those they passed on their way out of camp.

I remember leaving with all the emotions of excitement and hope and sadness and loss mixed into one. Driving away for what I knew would be the last time I would EVER see some of the people who were so important to me just minutes before.

There have been others in life who have brushed by for days or weeks or months and then were gone...but none ever brought so many mixed emotions as those I left that day in Vietnam...or those who left those days before me. War does that to people.

That is happening day in and day out in Iraq, and it is no easy hurdle to put behind you.

There's a strange but powerful sense of loss that accompanies your thankfulness for making it home.

What you experienced is the same thing. The good news, of course, is that during our journey we come to appreciate more readily those people we meet....because we know it could end tomorrow.

azskyman