I wonder what happens to those people we see every day then no more.

Bretrick

Bretrick

Well-known Member
Location
Perth Western Australia
A day comes when we realise we have not seen that person for a month or more.
We will never know what happened to them, we will never know if they moved away or they passed on.
Where I regularly have coffee there was an elderly gent who was over 90, he was there very often, we would talk about life, about the past, about the coming future, then I never saw him again.
It has been more than 6 months since we chatted. I will assume that he has passed away.
Every Sunday morning I have coffee at McDonalds in North Perth. Without fail a very elderly lady would be there reading the paper, having coffee, without fail. I realised this morning, not seeing her here, that she has not been here for 3 Sundays, I wonder if she has passed on?
People pass through our lives and we never know where they go, we never know how they ended up, we never know whether they passed on.
 

Recently, a situation happened to me and I realized that I was one of the people that someone wonders about.
I walk regularly in a park. I ran into a young couple who are also regular walkers and they began yelling, “ There’s our lady!!!! We were worried about you! We haven’t seen you for awhile! “
Suddenly, I realized that they thought that I had died! it was shocking to me and made me feel very old.
 
It's the same online. You may have known someone on the forums, perhaps chatted with them regularly and then after several years they disappear. One is left wondering.. did they die, or get ill.. or just fed up with the forum.. or perhaps their Computer broke down and they couldn't afford to have it fixed ... :unsure:

I'll tell you this much.. if I'm going to leave the forum I will tell you all,even if it's only one day in advance... so if you see that I've stopped posting for a long time, you can be rest assured , that if I haven't told you in advance I'm leaving.. that I'm sick or worse!!

In any case I have good friends on this forum and they have my email address... and phone numbers.. and I theirs...
 
For years during the early 1990s, 2000s decades, many online users were doing so only from workplace computers so would disappear if that ended for a list of layoff, fired, career change, reasons. Then after smartphones rose about 2005, that has increasingly been less the situation.

As it stands, there is little incentive for those that have begun participating in online forum communities to inform others after they no longer post, especially since many times it is probably due to a lack of interest or feeling of being an appreciated part of a community. Our board in fact, does not reflect the Bell Curve of intelligence, knowledge, and educational levels of the general populous but rather is along the right slope where language, technical, and computer, experience and skills have significant advantages. So by nature, that tends to filter away some users.
 
Marian said:
Recently, a situation happened to me and I realized that I was one of the people that someone wonders about.
I walk regularly in a park. I ran into a young couple who are also regular walkers and they began yelling, “ There’s our lady!!!! We were worried about you! We haven’t seen you for awhile! “
Suddenly, I realized that they thought that I had died! it was shocking to me and made me feel very old.
Click to expand...
I think I’d be grateful that they noticed I was gone and worried about me. It’s actually kind of sweet but then again, I don’t know them.
 
PeppermintPatty said:
I think I’d be grateful that they noticed I was gone and worried about me. It’s actually kind of sweet but then again, I don’t know them.
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After you've been here for a long time, and get to know people who come and go.. and those who stay for a long time ..then you'll not feel as tho' you don't know them, because you'll learn a lot about people here and they'll become friends
 
Marian said:
It was sweet but it was also very jarring to me to realize that people viewed me as old and not unlikely to die.
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Perhaps that’s just your interpretation.
Maybe they just missed seeing you and wondered if you moved , were sick or injured.
I’m not you but I think I’d view it as a caring positive encounter. They noticed you weren’t there and cared about you.
 
I was surprised how much I felt when a game "friend" died. It was just a random match from the game and I didn't know anything about the person until their linked Facebook page turned into a memorial page. Then I found out that it had been an old man who lived in Texas and was a veteran. The only posters for the memorial appeared to be nieces/nephews.

I haven't been able to bear to unfriend him from my game (the game is limited to 50 'friends' so I should replace him with someone still living who would send my town gifts (he used to send my town lots of gifts)) and sometimes I look sadly at his game town that will never be further developed and his little game crops that will never be collected.
 
Marian said:
It was sweet but it was also very jarring to me to realize that people viewed me as old and not unlikely to die.
Click to expand...
My bil brother passed at 46 lung cancer.
Three accidents nearby claimed three who combined age was less than mine.
I was a janitor at an electronics company. One lady asked me to refill the hand towels, I did, two weeks later she took a nap at home, never woke up. 52 years old.
Candles in the wind, we all are. Some blow out early, some late.
 
This is a thought-provoking thread.

There aren't many people that I see on a regular basis. The people at my gym come and go because it is near SMU so there are a lot of college students. There is one gentleman that I see often so he introduced himself, told me was 68 and has since always said hello. He was missing for a few weeks, so I was concerned. Then I saw him again this week and was reassured.

There is one wonderful older lady at Albertson's that always acknowledges me. She is just a wonderful person that seems to love what she does. If one day she wasn't there, I would miss her.

In the other places I frequent, like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, there seems to be so much turnover that I never see the same people twice.
 
Prior to retirement I started posting to a very political UseNet retirement group where I remained for more than 20 years. There were far fewer members, but we were closer than is the case here. Members remained true to the group and often continued to post until they died. Sometimes a relative would break the news, or we would find out in other ways. It was always a very sad event. I would still be there, but the group literally died.
 
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Bretrick said:
A day comes when we realise we have not seen that person for a month or more.
We will never know what happened to them, we will never know if they moved away or they passed on.
Where I regularly have coffee there was an elderly gent who was over 90, he was there very often, we would talk about life, about the past, about the coming future, then I never saw him again.
It has been more than 6 months since we chatted. I will assume that he has passed away.
Every Sunday morning I have coffee at McDonalds in North Perth. Without fail a very elderly lady would be there reading the paper, having coffee, without fail. I realised this morning, not seeing her here, that she has not been here for 3 Sundays, I wonder if she has passed on?
People pass through our lives and we never know where they go, we never know how they ended up, we never know whether they passed on.
Click to expand...
It is so true and so sad. We can grow very fond of people we see at the edges of our lives. It's amazing the chats we can regularly have with them. Then one day they have gone. I have known countless such souls.
I find the same with little friendships struck up online, on Facebook sometimes. One day they don't answer your message and there is no more on their Facebook page. It remains as a monument of their thoughts and ideas.

Of course we are they too! One day we shall walk and write no more and people will feel the gap we left.
 
It’s like what happened to Aunt Bea? I can’t believe she would just stop posting. I would have thought she would have said good-bye since she was a long time poster, I think. No one has to give a reason, but just a simple good-bye would be nice.

I’m not good at guessing, but with her, it does worry me that something has gone awry. She left an indelible mark on many posters here.
 
There once was a neighbourhood where we knew everyone. After expropriation, we lost touch with all. It was very sad as we were the last ones to leave.

The Baroness (widowed by the time I met her) and her sisters. The card playing and learning in exchange of house cleaning. All I know they moved to a much more prestigious area but I never saw them again. At the time they moved out, we didn't have our new address yet.

Then the Asian Family whose two girls had been in school with me. Both parents were deaf and their home back then had multiple new gadgets to help them hear, such as visual doorbell, phone with a text machine and a wee box connected to the television which gave them speech text below to view the dialogue.

I learned a lot of sign language back then. Eventually, I volunteered for the deaf and furthermore typing documents in braille for the blind children. Something that was enjoyable to do...
 
There was a fellow who manned the door at the thrift shop. I didn’t want to ask right away. When I did, they confirmed that he’d passed. Now his replacement hasn’t been there for a bit.

Sometimes I don’t see people walking their dogs. When I might see them later, I learn it was the dog that passed.
 
You think a bit like I do Bretrick. Though not social and not really a people person, I wonder the same things sometimes. There is an older man living in my apartment building over and down one. I was concerned when a fire truck was here the other night. He seems fine though.

Also we have the fake lakes in my area with ducks and geese. There is a goose with a damaged wing who I'm sure can't fly. I first noticed him or her about two years ago and think I saw the same one a couple of weeks ago. I guess it gets what it needs to survive.
 
An elderly (late 80's) woman who lived three doors down from me was always cheery and welcoming. I knew her for a few years.
We talked on occasion, and she was still active.

This morning when I came back home from a run to the store, her apartment door was wide open, and someone was putting her bedding into the hallway. I didn't stop to ask questions.
 

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