NTSC-RePlay 019: Gone But Not Forgotten

[Neon Ignition]

A more somber note this time with our latest addition to this series. It's been thirteen long years since the original thread was posted so we've all grown older in that time and with that often comes loss. It's that loss we will be looking back at as...

This isn't NTSC-UK... it's NTSC-RePlay

It was 11 December 2009 when Adam Stone asked the simple question of who did we miss. The thread spanned friends, relatives, loved ones, pets and past site users. Some through death, some simply through having exited our lives.

We return to the subject in 2022 to ask:

Who do you miss?
How much does loss plague your thoughts now that you are older?

[Asura]

I miss Spira bars.

[Neon Ignition]

Out of the last decade we've lost a couple of people in the family, mostly in close succession around 5 years ago.

The biggest was a suicide, not in a pleasant manner either, which left a very lasting impact on several as you can imagine. Another was through alcohol but due to that long sign posted, avoidable though. Then alzheimer's and finally the most recent being my Nan, the one with the problematic son. Cancer was the cause there as she opted against treatment. Bad decline and her last exchange with my uncle was him visiting her in hospital a couple of days before the end and when she opened her eyes she screamed for him to be taken away resulting in the nurses leading him out and him saying she must have dementia or something too.... there's definitely more there than she was letting on for that to be your dying exchange with your own child. Things wouldn't have worked out for her either way sadly, if she'd have opted to fight it COVID struck four weeks after she passed so she'd have had her treatment interrupted and been locked endlessly in her home with just him

[Dogg Thang]

That’s all hard stuff to deal with. Definitely as we get older, we lose so many more people. This year alone, I lost two friends. One from cancer. The other, still not even sure. He went to sleep one night and never woke up. No warning signs, no diagnosed health issues. Heart just stopped. Scared the crap out of me so I got a full health check.

I sometimes ask myself this question though - who do I miss? My dad died over 10 years ago. Have never missed him. He wasn’t a good dad. There are people who I felt close to who I have lost but I don’t find I miss them. In a weird way, when I don’t see them it’s just like the times between the times I saw them, if that makes any sense. Like I might visit my grandparents for a week but then not see them for months. Since they died, I feel like I’m just in those months, like I could still visit them if I wanted to. Is that weird?

But I did have an uncle and he died maybe 15 years ago. Maybe a little less. And he was such a good guy. I often think of him and miss him. For whatever reason, I’m aware that I can’t just visit him.

[nonny]

Biggest one for me is losing my best friend to suicide 6 years ago. Hit me hard because I was living overseas and relocating back here and was excited for him to meet my kids... I knew he was suffering with depression but didn't think it had gotten that serious from our conversations and then suddenly got a phone call in the middle of the night to say he'd taken his own life.

He was an amazing person and I miss him every single day.

I've lost several older family members in the same timeframe but it's different. You almost appreciate there's a certain order to death but this one just felt cruel and preventable...

[teddymeow]

I miss my grandfather on my mother's side and both grandparents on my father's side.

Obviously, I loved them very much but their loss, I believe, triggered a change in my parents and they are no longer the bright, happy people I remember from before my grandparents were gone.

I also miss them because they didn't all get to meet their great-grandchildren.

Grandfather (mum) met my first and second children and Grandad (dad) met my eldest but that's it. My Grandfather was Managing Director of a bookshop in Picadilly and was a huge reader and he would love that Harry is so into his books.