Mental Health Support

Last edited Wed Sep 14, 2022, 11:30 AM - Edit history (1)

of friends and relatives. If it's any consolation, you are not alone.

My mother came from a very large extended family. She outlived all of them, despite being born as a 27 week preemie not expected to live. At 90, when she was in hospice after kidney failure, she asked me if her one remaining cousin was still alive. He was, but passed away just a couple days before she did.

In 2020, the last of my 3 siblings died of covid, leaving me the sole survivor of my immediate family. My father had 8 siblings. Last Thanksgiving, his last surviving one, who was also my godfather, passed away from covid.

I was married twice. Both former husbands are deceased.

My high school graduation class (1967) has a website that keeps track of all 580 of us as best as possible, plus previous and later classes. I discovered there that my best friend from junior high passed away 10 years ago. The boy that I had a huge crush on in junior high passed away 5 years ago. Same with another guy that I dated in high school. Several others that I knew as casual acquaintances are deceased. Most of those people died in their 60s. A few a little earlier.

Even the schools that I went to are "deceased." The junior high became a middle school but now is empty, dilapidated, and condemned for demolition. The high school closed a few years ago. My grade school closed and the property is being sold to a developer to build an apartment complex. So I can't even visit those old places to reminisce.

I just keep reminding myself that this is the nature of things. As we age, the younger generations move up into stages of life that are now memories for us, as happened with our parent's generation as we grew. Or, as Sonny and Cher put it, the beat goes on.