What happens when we die?

About an hour ago, I got a ping from my computer. 

It wasn’t the usual Teams notification.

Not a text, either. 

iCal update? Nope. 

Facebook? Lemme check.

I had an IM from a good college friend: Based on a FB post, she thinks that a mutual friend of ours just passed. Maybe it’s just a mistake? she wondered/hoped. He was on FB just yesterday with no hint that anything was amiss. 

Back in the day, you knew: My parents would get the phone call that so-and-so died, and they’d break the news to us.

We also seemed to have fewer social circles: family, family friends, school friends, maybe friends from something outside of school. That was it.

Today, how many groups do you touch? A bunch, right? (And do you even know everyone’s name?) 

Not looking for sympathy, but now the news-gatherer inside me wonders as I sit here hanging for confirmation: Did I just lose one of the first people I met at college or, perhaps, it’s just a false alarm?

As we recently saw right here, even in today’s world of instant communication, that news can still take quite a while to reach us.

Be VERY careful.

I recently observed where someone announced such a thing that did not happen.  FAR better to assume not, than so.

Sadly, in this case, it did happen. Just saw the announcement that services take place tomorrow morning.

I landed at UGA not knowing a soul other than a dude I had met in the airport shuttle.

Stuart also lived on the top floor of my dorm–10 stories of freshman dudes–and was one of the first people I met once arriving on campus. Like me, he was also into music. When I lamented that I wasn’t quite old enough to get into local shows–I was still 17 while you had to be 18 to enter anything technically labeled as a bar–he suggested the Groove Trolls at a place downtown called the Downstairs. (Technically it was a cafe.)

Totally changed everything. 

Like so many people, we lost contact after school–too many moves to keep track–but reconnected via FB. A few years ago, while I was out in the Bay Area, we met up. Even though we had reconnected online, it was good to see him IRL. Stuart was a kind soul. 

So, for Stuart, sharing some Groove Trolls with the rest of the class.

I have a childhood playmate who was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It does make you think about what happens in the real world after.

I thought about it when Curmudgeon passed and letting the GRM crowd know was left to me.

Your hope is that you will be missed. People will ask where you are and notice your absence. 

I understand why old people read the obituaries. 

My wife has instructions to let you guys know if I kick the bucket. 

There will be no crying and gnashing of teeth. It's going to be party time. A hog will be cooked. Music will be played. Y'all will be invited. 

I had a very odd series of events around my grandfather's passing. Long story short, I didn't find out about my grandfather's death until 24+ hours later and it caused a chain reaction of events that altered the course of my life forever (for the better). Digital communication can be a very, very strange thing.

There's an email chain for about half of my high school classmates (it was a small school), and we're getting to that age where people dying is happening more often - there were two in the last year.  Our 50th reunion is next year, so I'm going to put some effort into trying to track down as many of the rest of the class as I can.  Some of them will be pretty easy to find, but I suspect others may as well have disappeared off the face of the earth.

On a more personal note I went to my primary care physician for my annual checkup earlier this year.  I've been going to the same guy for 20 or 30 years.  Then, a month or so later I saw his obituary in the newspaper.  That was an odd feeling.

Somewhat related: All but one of my grandparents passed within the last few years, and I wasn't with any of them when it happened.

I know people say that they like having that closure when their loved one passes in their company, but I'm not so sure if that would have made anything better for me.

I kind of like having memories of them when they were in their prime, not when they were decaying on their deathbed. 

I don't know, just something I've been going back and forth on it in my head for a while.

Which reminds me that I have to make SWMBO a list of internet forums to contact when the time comes.

Reminds me of NOT A TA just recently. Like I'm pretty sure who's gonna break the news here (assuming that person doesn't go first and I don't have to do the job for them, because my math has it working both ways) but how are people going to find out? That was a VERY real concern for me just over 3 years ago. SWMBO was probably going to have to tell ex swmbo - who was probably going to tell my kid - (and a bunch of people she probably had no business telling, she's got all the decorum of Ozzy in a church) and God only knows how that would filter from there. 

Curiously, I am not long returned from a funeral service I attended today at noon.  He was an older gentleman who had lived a good and lengthy life.  His sons and his wife had some very nice things to say about him.  Must have been near 200 people in attendance, in the middle of a workday. 

The guy who ran my dog training group a died of Covid a couple of years ago. It took a while for the group to re-organize. A good friend of the family called a few months ago to tell me that his mother just passed on. This is a guy I grew up with. I spent time at his house as a kid. It seems like every day another rock star who was popular when I was in high school dies. I grew up with that music. Guys my own age are dropping right and left. It is a strange feeling.

My entire immediate family is dead now. Mom died last year in the nursing home of COVID. My dad and my younger sister have been gone for about 20 years now. I sold Mom's car that Dad actually bought new in 1998 about a year and a half ago and had mixed feelings about that. Mom sold the rest of Dad's cars right after he died. She needed the money. Everything my family ever owned that is left is now in a shed behind the house or in a closet in the second bedroom. I rarely go into that shed, and when I do, I get a funny feeling. I know I will have to clean it out soon so we can make the second house into a rental. But not today. I dread the day I have to do that.

Every dog I have owned in my adult life, except for the two I rescued last year, are cremated and in boxes on the shelf, except for my first two that are buried in a pet cemetery in Sachse, Texas. Two of my old dogs died within a month of my mother dying. One died a week after Mom's funeral. 

It all went by so fast. Organizing both Mom's and Dad's funerals. Dealing with Dad's debt and my Sister's medical debt. Dealing with collection agencies for what my Mother still owed of Dad's debt. Selling Mom and Dad's house. Dealing with my Dad's alcoholism and my Sister's drug use. Selling my Sister's house in Colorado. Seeing everything my sister left burn up when a homeless man set the storage facility where we moved her stuff on fire. Dealing with Mom's dementia and her slow decline to the point that she would do nothing but sit in a wheelchair all day and watch TV. Watching the brand new nursing home where she lived fall apart under Covid and a labor shortage. Watching a good hospital in Dallas fall apart with the pressures of Covid and the same labor shortage in the chaos of my Mother's death. It's all gone now.

Somedays I feel old. Other days I feel that it was all another life, far away from my current life with my wife, her family and my two new dogs in a different house. There is much less drama here.

Still, it feels so strange.

The car goes to a friend if he wants it, kiddo gets the watch, and my wife is under strict orders to bring a date to the funeral. 

Hopefully some good that I did will outlive me.

Beyond that, not my problem anymore.

Planning to live forever. So far, so good.

"Every dog I have owned in my adult life ... are cremated and in boxes on the shelf"

You aren't the only one. We've amassed quite the collection of wood boxes.

Being the generation that I am, my wife will post it on FB and it will spill outward from there, so I'm not worried about the people that matter finding out. I make sure all of my vehicle titles are in the safe and that most of the crap in the garage is labeled as to what it is for. I'm trying not to leave a giant burden for whoever is left vs the way my folks did it.

This reminds me of a friend I worked with years ago. We weren't super close after we didn't work together anymore, but I noticed I hadn't seen him post anything recently on BookFace.

I went to check his page and it seemed as though he had succumbed to his depression. 

What was really weird is that the person I replaced in my current job, who spent a week training me, recently died. She left our office to take a much higher paying high profile position. Some of her stuff is still in my office. Notes and files all in her handwriting. Her death was in the  Dallas Morning News.

Our office manager/bookkeeper died of cancer last year. She has not been replaced. Her office is still empty. Right around the corner from mine. Her files are still on the server.

It's creepy.

Whistling past the graveyard.

I'm hoping that a couple of you come to my funeral then  tell the rest. 
 

SOMEBODY has to clean out my garage!

CrustyRedXpress said:

The car goes to a friend if he wants it, kiddo gets the watch, 

I still wear my Dad's gold watch. 45 years at Pacific Gas and Electric Co. I would be afraid to wear that today in San Francisco. All the lawsuits, wildfires and gas explosions et al.

I'm set.  My older daughter is a nurse who can help me out with healthcare as I age, and my younger is a veterinarian, who can put me down when I'm over it all. "Cc's per kilogram of body weight, Dad."

And everything except the Camaro goes to auction.  Car goes to a good friend.

The apprentice keeps asking.

Seriously, can I have your lathe and your mill when you die?

I'm 61 and I don't have a will. I should probably get on that sooner than later.

OTOH, I could have 30 years left.

I'll do it tomorrow.

In reply to Toyman! :

I have told my people to cremate me, no funeral other than a meal catered by Earl Dukes bbq.  If you want to get up and tell lies, that's fine.  

In reply to spitfirebill :

Yep. Celebrate the life. Do not simply mourn the moment of its passing. 

SV reX 

SOMEBODY has to clean out my garage!

That is going to be a real problem here.  

Bring a Christian the title makes me think of gospel tracts.