Sad things thread

[haltz]

That hits home with me today, Cards, and I'm really sorry about your loss. I just found out that my grandmother has four tumors in her liver. From what I've found out, this is a particularly bad thing as far as cancer goes. Anyway, it's been a pretty rough half a year for me. I haven't spoken to my dad in five months or that side of the family at all. I pretty much hate myself for letting his problems make it so that I didn't talk to her, and now when I see her in the hospital tomorrow evening I'm not sure how I'll react.

And I'm sorry to hear about your friends, Zeus. They truly sound like awesome people.

[tothebeach08]

Strange thing just happened. I'm in my office, crying at my desk because every part of my life kinda sucks right now. Or so I thought. I opened GRB to destress and saw this. I was reminded that my life is actually pretty great. I feel so bad for you and your friends. I'm sure both of these women inspired plenty of people in their short lives. Here's the thing though about feeling hurt and feeling pain. If we can feel hurt and pain, then we can feel love. And that's a good thing, that's always a good thing.

[heyzeus]

You're absolutely right, beach. I think we have to feel dejected and tearful first, though, before we can draw that line in the sand to re-assess things. That's what allows the realization that life is pretty great, and that we have to make the most of the opportunities we have.

I'm going to try to be a force of good and let the people that I care about know that. That's my goal, coming out of these bad times.

Cards and Haltz, I'm sorry for your bad news. Give the people you love a hug and tell them you care. Haltz particularly, don't let anything come in the way of telling your grandma what she means to you at this time in her life.

[Dillagii]

These stories are like knives to my soul.

Man, life can be hard, eh?

One of the students of the University I've studied in Edwardsville is diagonized with Blood and liver cancer. She is been hospitalized at BJC and they are doing Chemotherapy. She is admitted to BJC right now. She is just 24.

And one of my cousins' daughter died of cancer at the age of 11. She was very enthusiastic and terrific kid and suddenly everything went downhill and she died within a year. Think about her parents. They were devastated. They spend everything they had for that kids' treatment and still couldn't save her. Tears are coming from my eyes as I type this.

[Vince's Firecrackers]

When I go through rough times it helps me to think of things like Beach has said. We have to take the good with the bad. Also I do my best to try to learn something from a difficult situation. Often times I find a lesson in observing how people that admire handle their pain or loss. It sounds like your friend who lost his young wife is a great role model for handling difficult times.

Life can be hard but it can also be wonderful as well. Try to focus on the good stuff during the hard times.

[KyCardinalFan]

And one of my cousins' daughter died of cancer at the age of 11. She was very enthusiastic and terrific kid and suddenly everything went downhill and she died within a year. Think about her parents. They were devastated. They spend everything they had for that kids' treatment and still couldn't save her. Tears are coming from my eyes as I type this.

This is one of my greatest fears. I pray that I will see all my daughters live long and healthy lives and enjoy families of their own.

Sorry to hear of the problems and losses. I hope you find comfort here and the families find comfort in their lives.

[Dillagii]

And one of my cousins' daughter died of cancer at the age of 11. She was very enthusiastic and terrific kid and suddenly everything went downhill and she died within a year. Think about her parents. They were devastated. They spend everything they had for that kids' treatment and still couldn't save her. Tears are coming from my eyes as I type this.

This is one of my greatest fears. I pray that I will see all my daughters live long and healthy lives and enjoy families of their own.

Sorry to hear of the problems and losses. I hope you find comfort here and the families find comfort in their lives.

Yeah.. There is nothing we can do. It happened a year ago..There is nothing we can control also.

[ThatGuy]

Zeus, I'm really sorry to hear about your friends' losses. The story about the young girl really hit home for me, because I'll be turning 20 in a few months, and I honestly can't imagine how strong she must've been to live the life she did with the problems she had. We all likely know somebody who has overcome great obstacles in his or her lifetime, but this girl in particular sounds like somebody we all would've benefitted from knowing. Your story made me sad and happy at the same time - sad because she lived such a short life, but happy because there actually ARE people like that out there.

Two depressing stories of my own (one recent, one a bit older):

A few days ago, I got a text message from my brother saying, "Did you hear that so and so died?" I was caught completely off guard, so I called him up to get the details. Apparently, a kid we knew from our hometown in New Mexico had been swimming with a friend in Puget Sound last week, and nobody has seen him since. They haven't recovered the body, so it's not 100% certain that he's dead, but at this point they're pretty sure that he drowned. I wasn't great friends with this kid (he was a few years older than me), but my family has known his family for at least 15 years - went to the same church, he and I both played soccer (this was a small town, so playing the same sport meant seeing a lot of each other), etc. My parents are actually pretty close to his parents, so overall it's just a very sad and unimaginable situation. He had a very serious illness about 8 years ago that pretty severely hampered the use of his legs (can't remember the name), so ever since then he had been the kind of person that lived life to the fullest as much as possible. It's just very shocking to me, because you never expect to hear this kind of news, and something like this can happen to anybody at any time.

The second story has a lot of bad, but there's a glimmer of hope at the end. I don't recall if I've ever shared this here before, so if I have, forgive me. In December of 2004, my parents got home late on a Saturday night from my brother's basketball game in Taos. My mom was crying uncontrollably, so I immediately knew something was up - she almost never cries. What I learned after that was pretty much the worst news I expect to hear in my lifetime. My mom's youngest sister and her husband, who live in Macon, MO, had been out at a Christmas party that night, and while they were gone they left their three kids with my grandmother, who lived in the same town. Apparently, my aunt had tried to call several times later in the evening to check on the kids, and each time the phone just rang endlessly. She got worried and decided to drive out to the house to make sure everybody was okay. When she got there, she saw the house almost completely engulfed in flames from one end to the other. The firemen showed up not long after she arrived, but it was too late to save anybody. My grandmother and three of my cousins died in the fire. Grandma Barbara (as we called her) was 72, Garrett and Megan (twins) were just under 3, and Mallory wasn't even 2. The next few weeks of my life after that night were completely surreal - every day I woke up and had to remember what happened, and it seemed like every time it came back to me I asked myself, "Did that really happen or am I dreaming?" I'm sure many of you have experienced that feeling before, but it's somewhat hard to describe. Everybody in my community was beyond amazing (people made dinner for us every night for a month, the high school had a fundraiser to offset some of the funeral costs for people they didn't even know, random people sent us cards, etc.), so it was uplifting in that way, but my entire family was in shock for a long time. I don't even know how my aunt and her husband continued to function, but somehow they did. It's almost been four years since this happened, but it feels very fresh to me, and the fact that the aunt has been trying unsuccessfully to have kids ever since (naturally, adoption) makes it much worse. I've heard from my mom that they are close to finalizing an adoption for a baby from South America, so I'm praying for the best, but almost every day I find myself wondering how she and her husband aren't crazy from grief. It really tears me apart thinking about it all, so while I know that they can never just forget about what happened, I hope beyond all hope that they can open a new chapter in their lives. Something needs to go right for them.

Anyhow, sorry for the long post. Those are two things I felt the need to share. Thanks for the thread, Zeus.

[jim]

Whew...

I'm going to go count my blessings now.

[ghostrunner]

I've often thought about if somebody on here died. It's possible none of us would find out. My wife might post here if something happened to me - she knows I'm on here a lot, but I don't even know that she knows the name of the site. I'd feel weird telling her to do that ahead of time (as opposed to...?), and then it seems presumptuous that any of you would want to know. But at the same time, I'd hope any of you would do that.