Reading obituaries is the ultimate in traveling through time and space.
Every once in a while, I get the sudden urge to check on whether someone I knew long ago is still alive. It usually doesn't end well. For example, when I planned to visit Arkansas (where I lived almost 30 years ago, and had never been back) I looked up several people not long before I was planning to leave - my first boss, my two next door neighbors, and found out they had all died in the past several months.
Well, back in March I published a post about Sid Hashian, the drummer of the rock band Boston on their first two albums. I talked about a then-young man who had introduced my spouse and I to the band in 1977.
I had to know if he was still alive. Bad habit. I knew that another young man who was a mutual friend of ours had died several years ago. A part of me wanted to know if the friend we had lost track of years ago was still around, and a part of me didn't.
When I did an Internet search, I didn't find the ex-friend's obit. But I did find his father's. And, if you ask why that is significant, it is because his father's obituary brought back the memory of a good man, a man I only met once, but a man whose memory had stuck in my mind ever since.
That memory stuck enough that I wrote about our friend's father in my Veteran's Day post on November 11, 2009. And now I know the answer to the question I asked at the end of the post, where I wondered if that veteran tormented by his war service had found peace.
In 2015, he finally did.
Rest in peace.
Not all travels have happy endings.
A few years ago I started reading the obituaries. I have come across people I know and am no longer in touch with. I think it is a natural part of the aging process cause every older person I have ever known has done it. MY MIL seemed to be going to wakes all the time.
ReplyDeleteI can pinpoint exactly when I grew up SAST with obituaries. It was after September 11. It felt to me like a small way I could honor the dead and I sat and read every single one of them. And I've never stopped xo
ReplyDeleteI haven't really sought out too many old acquaintances. I'm not of an age where many will have passed. Although, I did hear a high school classmate (who had been a cop) had been killed... So, maybe best that I don't go looking.
ReplyDeleteMom called them "The Irish Sport Pages," and read them religiously, every morning. I think it's just something you start doing as you get older.
ReplyDeletePrayers and thoughts for your ex-friend's father.
It does feel awful when you try to find some one who you lost touch with and it does not end well. It brings back so many memories
ReplyDeleteIt does fill you with grief.