Comments on: On coming across the obituary of a college acquaintance

By: buddhaha

buddhaha — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:53:35 +0000

I had to count it out, but, yes… 47 years ago, I was sitting in a chair, waiting my turn, in a barbershop, when I picked up a week old copy of Time and read about the spectacular death of a female friend. We had been “steadies” in junior high, later neighbors, and semi-confidants through high school. We never kept in touch, and I was surprised to find that she and her husband, who I slightly knew, left behind 4 kids when the building they were working on to open their own business was hit by gasoline tanker truck.
That convinced me of my own mortality in a way that even losing friends in Vietnam didn’t.

By: Mac

Mac — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 04:21:39 +0000

I guess all of us who are well up in years have stories like these. Two that hit me harder than I would have expected involved finding out in my 60s that someone I’d known in high school or college and not seen since had died in very sad circumstances within a decade or less of the time I had known them. The fact that they’d been dead for thirty or forty years and I didn’t know it was weirdly affecting, though I hadn’t been close to them even in youth.

By: John+Guilfoyle

John+Guilfoyle — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 03:48:57 +0000

David Foster… I graduated from high school almost 50 years ago… And I have a list of some I’d apologize to if I were given an opportunity. I wasn’t a really nice kid back then… took me a while to get my heart in the proper place.
My wife and the Holy Spirit are still working on it. 😉

By: IrishOtter49

IrishOtter49 — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 22:39:18 +0000

It ís the blight man was born for,
It is neo you mourn for.

By: F

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 21:10:40 +0000

Art Deco: Did I contact his brother? A good question. I did not, partly because I don’t know how to. But I think I will try now. Thanks for the suggestion.

Neo: Thank you for the Richard Cory poem. We really don’t know people the way we think we do. Nor, obviously, are we known by others as we really are. Apologies for hijacking your thread.

By: Cornhead

Cornhead — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 21:04:53 +0000

My 50th high school reunion was this past May. At Omaha’s Jesuit high school, they have us walk the stage and get an honorary diploma. I recall when the Class of 1925 was at our graduation. One of the alums was Logan Fontanelle, grandson of a famous Indian chief. There was a Fontanelle Hotel in Omaha back in the day and there is a school named for his relative.

We’ve had more than 20 classmates pass and we read their names at a Mass.

The real shocker was one classmate who was a Harvard alum. He had some type of nervous breakdown after college and he was just a wreck. Very sad to see.

So that the Class of 2025 would remember the Class of 1975, I gave away about 50 copies of Baltasar Gracian S.J.’s book: The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Hope some of them read it. Secret Jesuit knowledge!

By: David Foster

David Foster — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 20:04:24 +0000

At a high school reunion, a classmate said that his wife…who had just died, she was also a classmate…had asked him to give a message to me. Which was surprising, I didn’t know her well, I think we were in an English class together.

The message was that she wanted to apologize: I had apparently invited her to some event, and she’d never gotten back to me. (It must have been a group event, sailing maybe, pretty sure I’d never considered her for dating)

Interesting that she remembered that after all those years.

By: whatever

whatever — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 19:22:50 +0000

Similar vibe but different situation for me. I was thinking about the “good old days” of my first job now about 30 years ago and went through “where are they now” of my team and friends I hung out with at the time, which included going to bars after work, Christmas parties at each other’s houses and the like.

Using search and Linkined I found most of the team were retired and enjoying life, but I found one had died nearly ten years ago – of pancreatic cancer. This was shocking as she was just a little older than me, and we were good friends who just drifted apart after we both left the company and moved to different parts of the country. I was sort of sad that I was not around for her at the time, and that it took me nearly a decade to find out.

By: NancyB

NancyB — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 17:27:14 +0000

I had a best friend in elementary school, who moved across the country when we were in 5th grade. It was a big trauma of my childhood. She was a blue-eyed, blond pigtailed beauty, the perfect student whom teachers adored. We loved the same books, played dolls together. She sang in the choir. We actually kept in touch, via letter, somewhat decreasingly, but through high school. Her letters were pages long, and beautifully illustrated, and I still have some of her crafts — Christmas ornaments and felt sewing kits that are charming and accomplished.

I think we lost touch once we started college. My parents split up, with severe financial consequences, including to my education. I had some rough years and suppose I was embarrassed. But I always thought of her, and imagined her living some perfect life: graduation, career, marriage, children.

Once serious online information started being available, I Googled her. To my absolute shock, it turned out that she had been dead for more than 20 years — killed by a drunk driver the Christmas after she graduated from college.

The information hit me like a brick, as if she had just died. I felt real grief, although I hadn’t even seen her in more than 30 years. I suppose it was the contrast with my fantasies. And the fact that, most of the time I had been envying her, she was dead.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 14:13:57 +0000

A few years ago I found out that an old girl friend had died in 2018 and it hit me unexpectedly hard. I had liked her a lot and it was too soon, too early. The obituary listed no cause, but I suspect cancer. Her father is still alive at 101, he was a veteran of three wars and a member of the 442nd regimental combat team in WWII. He looks pretty good for his age.

Another unpleasant surprise was the sudden death of Mary L. Cleave in 2023. I had known her when she was at USU and she was the last person in our group I expected to die before 80. I was about to recommend her as a speaker and discovered she had died the previous weekend of a stroke. I miss knowing she is still around.

I’m living on borrowed time.