Have you had experiences of people around you dying suddenly/unexpectedly?

A week before Christmas this year will be five years since my best friend committed suicide. I’m not sure if that’s the kind of answer you were looking for, but I’m sure it counts since it definitely wasn’t expected.

I assume you mean multiple people. I haven’t had the experience with people very close to me, but I have friends who have lost multiple people suddenly in their life. One friend lost 5 or 6 friends and relatives and their dog all in two years time. their mom, a cousin, and I don’t remember the other relationships, but they were all siginficant. There was a lull for barely over a year and then just recently his SIL had a cardiac event and needed surgery within two days of being hospitalized, but last I heard she was doing well. Still, that family has had a lot of scary health issues and death. Most of the death has been sudden.

I also know more than one person who lost both of their parents within several months of each other. They help make up that statistic I guess. My neighbor lost both of her parents within 3 months of each other, I knew them both. Her mom had become ill and had less than a year to live. Then her dad suddenly died, and her mom a few months later. Actually, her husband had lost his own father less than a year before, so as a couple it was a lot of loss, although his dad was not very sudden.

My family historically has sudden death. That’s what you used to get if your family is predisposed to heart disease and mine is. My maternal great grandfather dropped dead at 38 on the dancefloor at a wedding. His two sons died in their late thirties and forties fairly suddenly from heart disease. The one who lived into his 40’s had one cardiac event he lived through, but then dropped dead suddenly a few years later. My paternal grandmother dropped dead from a heart attack at a young age also. I had thought it was in her forties, but my sister thinks she was in her early fifities. Still young.

Do you mean waking up to the coffee cups and Kleenexes on the table, the deciding to not go with Grandpa in the truck one afternoon, or waking up to weird noises and your mother screaming? Or was it the softball game? Sorry, pretty morbid.

At the small college I attended, six students died within four years. This is out of ~2500 co-eds.
* One had a heart condition that none of us knew about.
* One died of TSS.
* One was drunk, and while throwing up out of her dorm window, fell out.
* One was delivering newspapers early in the morning in a heavy rain and drove her car into a tree.
* One got high on some drug and jumped off of a brick retaining wall, landing on pavement.
* One was a passenger in a car that went around a curve too quickly and crashed.

A few years out of school, another guy was in a freak sledding accident that left him partially paralyzed. I had the chance to visit him in the hospital. A week later, he died suddenly from a blood clot.

@Pied_Pfeffer Oooo – painful stuff!

@janbb Yeah, it was a bit surreal. As a member of the Chapel Council, we planned and delivered memorial services for them.

Yes a few. Before I flew to the UK, my ex husband died. He was a real strength to me and to my son (who is an addict). It was horrible. I spoke to him on the Friday via cell and I learned later that he died a few hours later. He was in Dubai and had gone into a coma in the bath. He was only found on the Monday. I deleted the last message he sent me, which was on the Friday, else I knew I would keep staring at it incredulously. I felt such shock that when I was told, I thought it was a sick joke.

I’ve never actually wailed out loud in sorrow and I did that moment.

Also my best friend died and I found out the day my mom died. It was also strange how I found out. I was reading a paper in a coffee shop. I had seen her on the Monday, now I was reading her obituary? She lived quite far from me at this time, and I had seen her briefly on a visit to our city. At the same moment I got a call that my mom was dying.

It was a crazy feeling as I got a phone call from a friend telling me my friend had died, and I was standing over my mom who had just died.

One good friend a few years ago that had a sudden and fatal heart attack just a few months after his 50th birthday. He was a brilliant artist and musician and my writing mentor for about 18 months before he keeled over at dinner with his wife. I was very shocked and saddened. He seemed to be in good health didn’t smoke or drink and was always active.

Personally I think just dropping dead suddenly is the best way to go. I would much rather just up and die suddenly than suffer and linger in a state of compromise and pain.

A friend killed himself a little over a year ago.

A little over a year ago my cousin’s husband woke her in the night. She thought it was a charley horse, and started rubbing his leg. She heard a funny noise and turned on the light. He wasn’t able to breath. She call 911 and he fought the first bunch so badly that they had to call a second. By the time they got him to the hospital, he was brain dead. 52 years old.

If you’ve not heard this story before, stick with it.

Their only daughter was in the process of moving back here from 3 hours away. Her husband is a mortician. You got it, he was just days away from being his son-in-law’s first customer. The daughter was a daddy’s girl, the son-in-law ‘the son he never had’, and their child – his grandson – was the chief joy of ‘Pappy’s’ life.

He was the chief breadwinner and left nothing. The funeral ate up a good chunk of the pittance of a life insurance policy his work carried on him. He was well liked by all, even doing the announcing of the local radio station for HS ball games.

When I was about five years old my mother’s baby god daughter died of meningitis. I think she was less than a year old. I was there when she started to get ill and saw the rash that, if memory serves me correctly, covered her whole body. At that point everyone realised that this was serious and I was removed from the situation. She died shortly after.

I think death always catches you off guard. Even with long term illnesses.

A friend’s father passed away after years of fighting cancer. My brother died from an overdose. Rationally, we all saw it coming. But when death comes, it blindsides you.

Yes and when it happens it is unbelievable. Two or three years ago a co-worker died in her sleep and everyone was shocked and couldn’t believe that she was gone. She did not appear to have any physical problems and had not complained of anything to others. She just went to sleep and didn’t wake up. It was so sudden and so unexpected. All of her co-workers were dazed and the family still has times when they find it hard to cope, especially during the holiday season.

Last year in December I woke up and my family was sitting around in a circle downstairs. My mom was crying and my dad said, “I know you all love your aunt very much, but she is waiting for you all up in Heaven right now”. Turns out she committed suicide the night before. She had bipolar disorder and depression, and I think it all just built up until she couldn’t take it anymore. It was very unexpected. It almost didn’t seem real. It still doesn’t seem real, and it was almost a year ago.