What a way to make yourself feel old suddenly! (friend, years, grandmother)
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I suppose if there was anything positive about fb, it's that it is so prolific that there's a very good chance that people from one's past may be in it. This gives opportunity to "connect" with those long lost.
Now, the data collection activities that fb does, that's another matter/risk.
It feels like small sections of your youth are picked out and put in the grave with them. Not that it affects your current quality of life, but parts of your past are literally dead. Like I said before - weird
Having spent my teens and young adulthood with my grandparents, I was closely exposed to aging. I'm beginning to hit the same life points of my grandmother, who I thought of as old and out of it back then. Feels a bit like karma.
I'm one year younger now than she was then when her husband died. Me as a twerp: "he was old, it shouldn't be a shock that he died." Grandpa was only three years older than I am now when he shuffled off the mortal coil.
As a young snot, you don't think you'll ever be 'old' (well, some don't get that far), then you are and are amazed at how fast that stage of life arrived. That is "feeling old" even if you are perky, active and still have great joy in living.
I think we all thought that way. When I was 12 or 13 a neighbor died of a heart attack at 56. I remember my parents being shocked, and I thought, "Why are they so surprised? He was an old man."
I understand what you are saying. Facebook for many brings it front and center. You can have high school groupings where you are friends and also some you stay in closer contact with. It is unsettling at times to find out some one died you hadn't checked in on Recently especially on their birthdays. What brings it home is when they make reference on their page to someone else dying who you don't pay close attention to. Your immediate reaction is to picture them as you once knew them until you go to their page and see a more recent picture.
It is like that for those you worked, lived with as friends and neighbors etc etc.
Imagine a popular teacher on Facebook with a multiple thousand number of former colleagues, students and parents as friends who stay up with them. If they are in our age range it must be tough seeing those much younger passing.
A well-liked history teacher from my school is on Facebook. His birthday popped up recently and he got a lot of well-wishes from former students, myself included. He is 91. Wrote a nice thank-you post.
I just discovered one of my old bosses died of COVID this last year. He was in his mid 80s and had diabetes and fully vaxed but was out of state and delayed going to the doctor until it was too late. My wife's last uncle died early last year, around 90.
My high school reunion (50th) was in 2016 and for some of those people, nothing has changed. I tried to follow the plans on the Facebook page but lost interest and didn't go. No one I wanted to see went. The list of the deceased classmates was growing but most on the list died young. I suspect that many have fallen out of contact.
My 50th college reunion was a couple years ago. I lost track of all but a few of that group. Several have died. One in Vietnam. One of AIDs. One in France. None recently that I know of.
My oldest friends from grade school and my first job from the 1970s are still hanging in. One drowned on vacation in Guam decades ago. The rest, in their mid 70s, are surviving and still active.
There hasn't been any increase in recent departures.
I don't read obits. I'm 1,000 miles away from my hometown and have no way to keep track. I occasionally have long lost people pop up on Facebook, communicate, pass on a little news for a few days and then disappear. The friends stay connected.
I moved away from my home state a long time ago and didn’t keep in touch with high school classmates. Never attended any class reunions, either. Yet for some strange reason, tonight I got sidetracked into searching names from my HS graduating class. Three of them popped up in obituary listings, with death at different ages.
I attended my 10-year high school class reunion, and found that three out of our 240 members had already died. One heart attack, one climbing accident, and I don't recall the cause of the third.
I don't know how many more have died 25 years after that, but I'm sure there have been a few.
Yes, and I didn’t think any posts were self-congratulatory at all.
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