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As The World Shrinks

I'm certain many feel this way.

As I age and watched death consume family and friends, Vickie being the most painful, I find myself occasionally looking into those from the past. Each time I find someone has passed my world feels smaller. This past year I discovered an aunt a cousin and my fathers best friend passed away over the past several years. Today I discovered my first wife died in November of 2020. She was 65. She was a medical scientist and died 1 year after retiring. We parted on good terms but didn't keep in touch. For me when it's over it's over. But it still made my world even smaller. I did keep in touch with her mom for a while however. Yes I got along well with my mother-in-law. I learned today she passed in 2010.
They don't have to be in our lives to feel the loss. Each one learned to be gone shrinks my world. I've been doing it alone for 2 years come next Tuesday yet the days each of them were there is still remembered.

The world continues to shrink yet to discover who else has left this world. Death is finality to those of us remaining.
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Punches · 46-50, F
Whether we got along well with someone or not, I think what makes it hard is that it is difficult to imagine that someone is living life, doing everyday things, maybe they were part of our lives, but then one day just... gone.

But yeah, the older we get, the more our world seems to shrink.
Older relatives, friends, even celebrities we used to look up to start dropping off.

The we*rdest part is - at some point in life, we didn't actually believe they would one day be gone.

How can someone be so full of life but then just gone some day?
Gibbon · 70-79, M
@Punches So true. We take existence for granted and even go into denial they are leaving even when we know how ill they have become. When we experience that day 1st hand a painful reality sets in. When we find about it later memories sometimes open mental flood gates.
Punches · 46-50, F
@Gibbon I guess in the best cases, we at least are able to see it coming.

I have lost four people since 2013, and in every case it was due to health issues.
In those cases, at least we can prepare mentally.

I will admit that when I was younger, I could hardly wait for the day I wouldn't have anyone pestering me about how to live or whatever.

Well, that "day" has been here for a while and it isn't what I thought it would be.