When I hit 65, I decided to look up old friends I had lost touch with. (In the US, it’s easy…too easy…the public databases know my every address since the '70s!! Anyone who has ever had a footprint in the US is traceable.) My childhood BF? Dead. My first boyfriend? Dead. My highschool artist chum? Dead. My uni (England) boyfriend who became a well-known investigative journalist? Dead. My sister’s uni (Dutch) boyfriend? Dead. My long-ex-husband? Dead. It’s a lot.
The moral of the story: don’t date bossybaby!
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I disagree, do date as much as your heart desires.
But don’t look them up once you’ve moved on.
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Ummm…@curley, there was no comma in Phil’s comment.
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This got me to thinking. I dated 4 guys in uni/grad school #1. of those 3 are dead. No idea what happened to them.
I worked with 2 guys who had AIDS, one died in 1990, at the beginning, and one is still alive 39 years later. Kind of amazing.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, I met a lot of women (and some men) online also with breast cancer. It was really helpful, very supportive. And there was an English language cancer support group in Basel. It was very active till about 2019, when one of the principals died. About 4 of us still meet for lunch.
But so many people that I knew died of metastatic breast cancer. It‘s a loss and a terrible disease. I have Facebook friends now who are in the US, some are having disease progression and I hope they‘ll still have access to decent care. Most of them are in their 40s and 50s.
I guess you think about this crap as you age.
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I found out a while back my first teenage sweetheart had died of leukaemia a couple of years ago in his early 60s. He married a girl who was in my class at High School and had 2 sons and grandchildren.
When I was treated for breast cancer I was in a meditation group at a local cancer centre attached to my hospital, I know one lady in the group eventually died. She had a heart condition and because of that couldn’t be given Herceptin. I also met other ladies at the chemo clinic in Edinburgh who were being treated for things like bone mets, some were on their last legs and one was featured in the You magazine that comes with the Mail on Sunday when they did a breast cancer month feature.
OH’s university friend lives in Spain and had a quadruple bypass 18 months ago which resulted in him being in hospital for about 5 months (he hasn’t led the healthiest lifestyle, heavy smoker, drinker and cannabis user since his teens). We’re going to Spain to see him in January as OH doesn’t think he’s going to be around too much longer. We were supposed to meet up with him January of this year but he wasn’t well enough and he’s now being tested neurologically for memory issues. He keeps asking if we are still living in Zurich and doesn’t seem to remember we’ve never lived there.
A 59 year old cousin of mine died 3 weeks ago, she was an alcoholic for years, started before she went to university. She was on life support but her brother was advised there was no hope and had to agree for it to be switched off, a tough call.
It all makes the joint pains I’ve had for years seem irrelevant.
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