I usually don't start threads about death, but this is almost too close to home. I just found out yesterday an ex- co worker died 4 days after I seen her. The guy that told me said she had heart failure and diabetes. It was sad because it was just this past Thanksgiving when I last saw her. We were in the supermarket, she was getting last minute things for the holiday, we hugged and chatted for a few minutes. She even invited me over to her home that day to eat. She looked healthy as a horse and looked great. My jaw dropped because I never thought she would die less than a week later.

A few years ago, a friend of mine from school had been in and out of trouble. He had supposely straighten up and was on the right track. We bumped into one another, gave each other a hug, and I told him to stay out of trouble. Less than a week later, he was shot and killed trying to break into their home. Sometimes the way you live, is the way you day.

Yes, one of the vice presidents I used to work with. It was just before Christmas in 1994 and he called me to say he was headed home with a really bad headache. I did my usual "mothering" thing and told him to take a couple of asprins with a hot drink (tea is best) and to lay down and hopefully it would go away. We got back to work on January 2nd only to find out it turned out to be an inoperable brain tumour. He passed away on January 5th and we buried him on the 8th.

It was such a huge shock. He had been a wonderful man, full of life. His son was blind and he taught skiing to the blind because of that and was involved in a lot of charitable activities. Even when I saw him laying in his casket, he had a slight smile on his face. So tough to think that here we just thought it was a run of the mill headache and he was days away from death. :(

Yes, one of the vice presidents I used to work with. It was just before Christmas in 1994 and he called me to say he was headed home with a really bad headache. I did my usual "mothering" thing and told him to take a couple of asprins with a hot drink (tea is best) and to lay down and hopefully it would go away. We got back to work on January 2nd only to find out it turned out to be an inoperable brain tumour. He passed away on January 5th and we buried him on the 8th.

It was such a huge shock. He had been a wonderful man, full of life. His son was blind and he taught skiing to the blind because of that and was involved in a lot of charitable activities. Even when I saw him laying in his casket, he had a slight smile on his face. So tough to think that here we just thought it was a run of the mill headache and he was days away from death. :(

I take it that was the last time he came to work, right?

I take it that was the last time he came to work, right?


Yeah - I think it was Dec. 23 or 24th or something when he went home. So sad having to clean out his desk and give the stuff to his widow. He had been with the company something like 25 years. I still think of him often. He had only quit smoking months before too and was feeling great.


And you're right - live by the gun and die by it.

We also had a coworker who took an brain hemmorage (sp?) at work. She passed out at her desk and was in a coma for a week before she finally died. That one was really sad - she left 6 kids, all under the age of 12. The company started a trust fund for them. Work would sure be the LAST place I'd want to die!

thats very sad :( I was talking to a teacher's aide at my school one day when i was about 10 years old. It was a friday and she was a very sweet lady, always saying hi to everyone and striking up a conversation no matter who you are. I smiled and said bye to her because my mom was picking me up. The next morning, as my mom and her were friends, my mom got a call that she had committed suicide. She had a young daughter at the time and it was very sad :(

thats very sad :( I was talking to a teacher's aide at my school one day when i was about 10 years old. It was a friday and she was a very sweet lady, always saying hi to everyone and striking up a conversation no matter who you are. I smiled and said bye to her because my mom was picking me up. The next morning, as my mom and her were friends, my mom got a call that she had committed suicide. She had a young daughter at the time and it was very sad :(


Oh WOW - that one is so sad! Funny how you can never tell sometimes just how messed up someone could be. Are they SURE it was suicide?

Yes, unfortunately. She put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. They think she was having problems coping with her cheating husband :mad:

Yes, unfortunately. She put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. They think she was having problems coping with her cheating husband :mad:


Then unfortunately she aimed the gun at the wrong person. :mad:

I totally agree, lol.

About 7 years ago I use to work for a printing company. One day this really sweet girl came in to order some business cards for her beauty salon. A few days later I saw a picture of her in the paper saying she was shot to death by her sister. I was so freaked out. :eek: :(

Here's a weird story...we went out to dinner to celebrate my dad's cousin's 80th birthday. She was nothing like 80, she was more like 50...very active, very upbeat, traveled a lot...she got around great and she was still mentally sharp. She was usually the life of most parties and she was that night too. We had a great time and went home, then about 3 hours later, only 3 hours later, around 11pm or so, we got a call from her sister who lived with her saying she called the ambulance. We went to the hospital and found that she had a massive aneurism and a stroke and was dead. She died around 11:30pm on her 80th birthday. It was strange to think we had just had this great time with her...we even went home and talked about how great she was doing. It's odd now to look at the pictures from the party, with her all happy and having a great time, knowing that she'd be dead in a few hours. The funeral cards with the same date, December 28, 1910 - December 28, 1990 were also odd.

WOW! That one gave me chills. :eek: At least she had a good time in her last moments.

Then unfortunately she aimed the gun at the wrong person. :mad:

AMEN!

WOW! That one gave me chills. :eek: At least she had a good time in her last moments.


That's what I was going to say - at least she had a really enjoyable evening. I'll bet she wouldn't have wanted to go out any other way - had a party and didn't suffer much. Good for her!

Yeah, I've heard and seen in the paper people who die on their birthdays. I think that would be cool actually - to go out the same date you came in on.

My mother died 25 years to the day her mother died - October 13th, 1996 and I thought that was really strange. I just hope the trend doesn't continue with me!!

That's what I was going to say - at least she had a really enjoyable evening. I'll bet she wouldn't have wanted to go out any other way - had a party and didn't suffer much. Good for her!
:lol: That's what we always say about her too...leave it to her to find a way to party her way out. That was just like her. :)

:lol: That's what we always say about her too...leave it to her to find a way to party her way out. That was just like her. :)


Isn't that a great way of remembering them? I hope when it's my aunt's time, that's how she goes - she's 86 now and has always been very active and social. I'd hate to see her bedridden and suffering much like my mother did. Too bad we couldn't all go out like that. ;)

I saw my former supervisor at work on my last day, and he had been retired for about a year by then. Then, a couple months later; I read that he had died.
A guy I used to work in the same building with; but only saw every once in a while; and one day I thought "You know, I haven't seen so-and-so for a while". Then, I heard later that I hadn't seen him; because he had died.

That also happened later; with another guy who had worked in my building; but I only saw him once in a while, too.

i had a friend who died just a few hours after we were learning a corny song in choir together.

I had just seen my dog's veterinarian a few days before he passed away. But
he had been ill for some time, and he was 73 years old. He loved animals (and
people) and never really retired. He is missed.:(

Gosh, some sad stories there. :(

never personally happened to me, but some years back, one of my sisters' friends died in a car wreck and they spoke on the phone maybe three days before it happened

One day I was at Suncoast, and I saw the maintenance man from JVS. His room, was next to my classroom, so he passed by a lot and talked to us. He was a good guy. Anyways, I saw him at Suncoast, we talked a little but. The next week, I saw that he died of a heart attack. :(

Another time, I saw a former cashier. She was a mother and on sick leave. Anyways, she came in to shop one day and the next week, I heard that she had died. It was extra sad with her because she had twins (a boy and a girl) who were about five or six years old and both were mentally challenged. They're the cutest little kids. But it's sad to think of them without their mother.

And then there was an old man at my church. He sat behind me and was just a nice guy in general. He was there one Sunday and dead the next. :( Though with him, I know he's in a much better place.

there was an Asian lady who went to my church a lot who would usually give out the blood of Christ during communion who was part of the church community for years, and she wasn't that old (late 40's/early 50's), and then out of nowhere, I found out she died of cancer. I never even knew the lady was sick

These are some touching stories, everyone. Again, I hate to post about death, but another one came to mind. One of my college professors. I had worked at Sears back in the 90s, and he came in to buy something in the sporting goods department. I noticed he had lost some weight, and his complexion was a tad darker than it had been before. I didn't think much about it, but I did say to myself, he didn't look the same and he may be sick, but because he was a former pro athlethe, and was full full of life, the thought never cross my mind. About two week later, he was in our local obits having passed away from cancer. I was in distraught.

Some of the stories about people we work with reminded me of another one that happened ten or 12 years ago. I taught in a small school at the time and one of our most gifted and beloved teachers was in a car wreck over a weekend with her husband and baby. They all three died instantly, and I remember you couldn't even get into the funeral home for hours, the line was so long. It was difficult to have to try to explain to the kids (little kids) that they're teacher wouldn't be back. We thought it was hard for us to understand how she was here one day and gone the next, but they really didn't understand. :(

This didn't happen to me, but it happened recently (in the last year) and involved a teacher I had for history when I was in eighth grade the 1998-99 school year. It's pretty creepy.

I guess it was part of his morning before-work routine to go to the gym at the middle school and work out there for a little while before heading home to shower and get ready to come back for work for another day of teaching his eighth-grade students. He did his routine that morning... All good. Then, as he was driving home to get ready for work, he suffered a heart attack. According to a few people I heard this from, he then proceeded to hit an utility pole and was pronounced dead at the scene. Nobody knows exactly when he died - when he had the heart attack, or when he hit the pole.

Mind you, this was on a SCHOOL DAY. And this was BEFORE the school day started. Tuesday, March 20, 2007, to be more exact. So the way it happened was, he was literally fine on Monday and then dead before the next school day started on Tuesday. The community was hit really hard by his passing, because he'd been a very big name around town.

I REALLY wanted to travel out of town to go to his funeral (I don't live in the town where I attended that middle school), but I couldn't, as I had JUST gotten home from a big trip to Los Angeles literally about 36 hours prior. :(

A few interesting things came out of his passing... they had to hire a sub teacher to finish teaching his classes for the reminder of the school year, and my eighth grade English teacher - a woman whom I ADORE dearly - was so devatasted by his passing (they'd been really good friends outside of school and loved working alongside each other at school), she decided to stop teaching at the middle school. She said it was just too painful for her to not have him around anymore. She still teaches -- she taught part-time at the local community college prior to his passing. After he died and she quit teaching at the middle school that May, she switched to a full-time teaching position at the college.

Oh, and I found out that my history teacher and I had the same birthday (August 16)!! :eek: He was the first teacher I ACTUALLY had to pass away, and he just happened to have the same birthday as me. That STILL freaks me out when I think about it!

Mine happened in November of 2005. My brother-in-law, Bobby, called to chat with me. He was married to my sister, who passed away in 1991, yet he stayed very connected to my family. Even after he remarried in 1996, he would take his wife to my family events. He used to tell me that while loved his present wife, he was still in love with my sister, and always would be. He took care of her gravesite -- kept it clean, put flowers there for her birthday, anniversaries and holidays.

He told me once that since my sister died, that he wasn't afraid of dying anymore. He took an interest in her son's lives, and did a lot for them as they became adults. My sister and Bobby were together for 11 years at the time of her death, so I knew him since 1980.

We had a real nice conversation the day he called. He had a great sense of humor, and always made me laugh. He was a fantastic listener too. That was on a Friday. The following Tuesday, his son called to tell us that Bobby had died of a heart attack the day before. He had an adult son and daughter from a previous marriage. At the wake, his daughter said to me, "He's finally with your sister, again." To this day, I can't believe he's gone. I loved him like a real brother. I saved a lot of his e:mails. Sometimes, I try to read them, but it's too painful.

If that wasn't a big enough shock, five days later, my 17-year old cat, Foxy, died. A double hit.

I saw both my Grandparents just before they died...Granpa about 3 days, and Granman about 12 hours before

Slightly off topic, I actually saw a person die, in church, on Xmas eve , during the Midnight Mass.......he just went down with his chair to the hall floor, and never got back up. Heart attack , i suppose. (That was I believe, coincedentally, the last time I went to a church service, not counting weddings or funerals)

In eighth grade, I had an English class teacher's assistant who was there Friday. When we came back on Monday, we found out that she passed away due to surgery complications. It was really sad. :(

Janice, that's so nice that you had a great talk with him before he passed. I hope that somehow brings you some comfort. I know how tough it was for you then. And if you are brave enough to post that, I thought I could my story of my father.

As I've mentioned, my father was a very bad alcoholic. He was up to drinking a 26 oz bottle of liquor (at least) per day (including weeknights when he was working). He smoked close to 3 packs a day and loved fatty foods.

Anyway, after years of trying to get him into treatment, etc. my mother waited for me to finish high school so she could leave. We had just moved out Apr. 11th 1980. I had a job waitressing/hostessing/cashier all that at a local steakhouse in our new neighbourhood. Instead of trying to clean up like we had hoped, he ended up getting worse and was close to being fired. The last time we spoke (on the phone) we fought. I was still begging him to get help and he was blaming me "for siding with mom". It wasn't that at all, we had done something drastic hoping he'd come around because nothing else had worked (tough love). I think I ended up hanging up on him.

A couple of weeks later, my mother wanted to try to patch things and on Friday, we invited him to our new apt. for dinner (we also heard he hadn't been eating properly). They were on friendly terms, but I still hadn't spoken with him even though I had been feeling badly about it.

That Saturday I went to my shift at the restuarant and was supposed to close that night. I hadn't been on duty more than 40 mins. when the call came in that he had had a heart attack and was at such and such hospital. As we were driving up there, my mother kept saying over and over how we'd have to move back so she could take care of him during his recovery. I just had a feeling that it wasn't going to be necessary. I KNEW he was dead. Just knew that he had been weakened enough that he wouldn't have survived. I was right - police met us at the ER doors and brought us into a small room. I think my mother spoke to him maybe 14 hrs. before. And it took me years to get over the guilt of that final fight. I learned long before 9/11 not to take anyone for granted. You never know if you'll get a second chance.

I try to live my life that way to this day. Dad - you know I loved you with all my heart.

One of my co-workers were in this resturant and an hour after they left the guy that served them fall over and died from heart troubles. The next day my co-worker read the paper at work and saw the artical that told about there server death at the resturant. My co-woker said that her and her husband noticed there server wasn't acting quit right and looked odd but didn't think much of it they just thought maybe he was having a bad day. When she told me about this I was like wow that is just to creepy.