posted November 16, 2010 01:54 PM            

I didnt see him again until i was 11 and this time it was only for a week. By this time we had gotten news that he had cancer, leukemia. And that he had been dishonorably discharged. The woman he was with in the first state had been a woman in a lower rank. After he got discharged he moved to another state, back to what he knows as home and found another woman. So, one week with dad in the summer...that was all the time i had with him before we got the call 9 days after my 12th birthday...when we got that call i just knew, somehow i just knew. My dad had died, and i became numb. This time, i did crawl under a rock.

I stayed home from school for 2 days, not knowing if my classmates knew why i was gone and when i went back to school i found all sorts of letters in my desk full of pity and sorrow. I hated those letters, i felt as though those people who gave them to me had no idea what i was feeling...

I am still under that rock but not as much as i used to be, thanks to some dear friends of mine then and now.

I want to know about your experience, your reaction to the news and how you came out of it

posted November 16, 2010 02:16 PM            

Unfortunately I am quite used to death.
I come from a huge family and most of them are addicts in some form or another, so by the time I was 10 or 11, the news of another death seemed like a normal occurance.

Then from the late 90's to 2002, all four of the people that raised me died. That would be my grandparents, and Aunt & Uncle.

The Grandparents were really hard because they were parents to me, so I know the feeling of losing 'a parent'.

But my Aunt and Uncle were still so young and vibrant. It was horrible. They died from Aids (IV drug users).

So, then I became REALLY numb. Like I couldn't even cry when one after another deaths happened.

UNTIL, my best friend died on April 14, 2008.
He was only 50, and got cirrosis (sp?) from drinking.
It was a long drawn out death that took it's toll on him physically, and it was so hard to watch.
He was hospitalized several times throughout, and the doctors would always say, "This is it.. say goodbye," but then he would pull through.
That is so emotionally draining, OMG.

The last month though, ughhh, he was bedridden and I was over there after work everyday.
I would crawl into his bed with him, and talk and talk about all the things we'd done together.
I don't know if he heard me or not.

I missed the actual dying by 20 minutes because I had left to go check on my kids.
I remember the phone call like it was yesterday.
I knew he was dying and yet my blood froze in my veins when I got that call.

Uggh... this is hard.
Anyway, I threw my phone against the wall, and had a big fit.
Then I went over there to sit with the family for the rest of the day and night.

The next weeks are a blur. I do remember him in his casket. I couldn't stop going back to it, over and over.

For some reason HIS death released the pent up stuff from the other deaths and I was a mess for a LONG time.

I'm still not over it by far. But I am better.
I talked to a psychic a couple months ago, and he told me that I am keeping my friend here with my obsessive thoughts.
Since then I've tried not to think of him as much, but it's really hard.
He is much of who I am.

posted November 16, 2010 02:24 PM            

that must have been very hard having so many family members dying and then your closest friend ever to die...

when my father died i thought it was the end, but now i realize his death is only the beginning for me...since then, another person in my life had died, again from cancer. she was my best friends mother and i was able to help her in her time of need like she had helped me for being my friend.

friendship in your time of need is the best medicine to heal with, that love from someone else especially if they know what your feeling so i'm sending you my love, Gypsee

posted November 16, 2010 08:05 PM            

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM0-ZU8njdo&feature=related

posted November 17, 2010 12:51 PM            

Remember I said my friend died on April 14, 2008?

Well, on April 14, 2009, we were driving down the road and got a phone call saying that my daughter was in an auto accident and she was getting loaded into an ambulance.
So, being about 10 minutes from that intersection, I turned the car around and got to the site of the accident.
They were t-boned in their pickup truck (my daughter and her boyfriend) and the car hit on my daughters side.
So, she was on a stretcher with her head in one of those thingies that makes it so you can't move.
They didn't know what the damages were at the time, because she hadn't been looked at yet.

So, as we are getting into the ambulance, ANOTHER ambulance goes screaming past us.
I thought it had the wrong address and was for her, but it kept going.

We got to the hospital, and they were giving my daughter all kinds of tests to make sure she was ok, (she was, thank GOD) and it was taking forever.

So, I went to get some coffee and there was a television in the little waiting room area.
The reporter was on the scene of an accident, and something, like a bell? sound went off in my head.
I sat down to watch it, and it was the accident that the ambulance was going to when we were at the scene of my daughters accident.

The victim was my co-worker (a very dear friend who served as bridesmaid in my wedding)
She was rear ended by a teenaged drunken driver, and catapulted out of her PICK UP TRUCK (black, same color as my daughters) and she was killed instantly.

That accident was on the parallel intersection as my daughters accident, on the anniversary of my best friends death.

I hate to be superstitious (although I am) but on April 14 of THIS year, I didn't leave my house.

posted November 21, 2010 10:25 AM            

Gramps was there when my dad's father died. He got some volunteer from a church to come talk to me. He had made me promise him when he died, never to shed a tear because he didn't want me crying over his death. He died less than 2 years later.

For the first 3 weeks I fought so hard not to cry and found the emotions building and brewing inside. This is what put me in the hospital. The grieving process was still new to me. A few more weeks after that I was still bottling my emotions and I had a good friend sit me down and he told me that I had better cry and let it all out and he would force me to cry.

What I did after to cope with Gramps death was journalling out my memories of him and I cried almost every day, then every week and that lasted a year. I had to distract myself from the visions I would get of dead people in a grave and knowing that the body decomposes.

There were a few occurences around my Grandpa's death that sparked my curiousity - as where does energy come from....how is it that my Gramps was able to say Good bye beyond the grave. Back them I didn't believe in the paranormal or astrology. I thought all of what the mystics were talking about was rubbish - so 18 months after he dies, I went to the library and started studying astrology for myself.....

This was a 2 bit answer here. Now when there is a death in the family, I wish them a safe passage back home and know that the person will be there in spirit and is still around, but in a different form. I have a more spiritual take on death now and coping with death is even different from the first time...

posted November 21, 2010 01:00 PM            

I have one to share, will take some time to write, and I'd also like to read what others wrote and respond in depth.

posted December 07, 2010 08:47 AM            

Seems my sister kept asking for me.
But that cold hearted b!tch stepmother did not contact me until hours later, after my sister had died.

I dealt with it by doing a lot of primal screaming and letting her go.
Never hold onto a person, or they can get trapped and not be able to move on.

Most other folks whom I was close to, I was able to accept their passing because they passed naturally, not from a sudden accident.

I have only one whom I did not deal with their passing for a very long time.
My lover in the mid 1970s.
His decapitated body was discovered one morning by his grandmother.

I'm having a hard time here writing about these things.
Nuff said.

posted December 07, 2010 12:32 PM            

Thank you for sharing that. I hope that bringing it here will in some way help you feel peace...

posted December 07, 2010 12:48 PM            

Before I analyze it more, am I seeing it right?
Is this the chart for each of you ON the day he died, Nicki?