Ever Discovered Many Old Friends Are Dead?

[Abraham]

If you get old enough, stay healthy and accident free, yes, of course many of your loved ones and friends will die before you. Such is simply part of the aging equation. Loved ones and friends die.

I just had a surprise visit from someone from 40 years ago and he informed me of so many mutual friends and neighbors who're dead it was mind blowing.

I'm stunned.

[Ameer]

[Jusme]

I know what you mean Abraham,
It seems like every month or so, someone I know passes. Most are my age or younger. My only hope is that I still have six friends left when I go to be able to carry my casket.

[Oldgringo]

Yep. The good news is that Mrs. Oldgringo and I are still around to hear/read of their passing.

[DEB]

My friends and I were discussing this recently. It is like being on a combat patrol, your time to be Point will come around.

[RogueUSMC]

In the last few years, guys I was overseas with have been coming back together via facebook and we have had a couple of reunions but we are losing members...

Just a few months ago, we lost the third to cancer...we have lost two to suicide...and those are just the ones we know about...

[RPBrown]

All but 2 of the guys I ran with in high school are dead. Died of various causes but it definitely makes you think about whats to come

[rotor]

The real problem with all of this is that it makes you want to not buy any more guns because you know that it will be a pain for the wife to get rid of after you are gone. Both brothers live in Commiefornia so they are not getting them.
So what! I am still buying.

[imkopaka]

Someone I served with made the news last year after cops killed him. He was apparently brandishing a machete and shouting religious nonsense at a college campus. He was not psycho OR religious when I knew him, and the more I read about it the more it sounds like a mental breakdown and/or suicide-by-cop. It messed me up for a while because I know that that wasn't who he was and I believe that if he had just gotten help for his PTSD he wouldn't be in the ground right now. Pretty sad.

[bblhd672]

Yep, too real these days. Family, friends, co-workers, shipmates; spouses and children of those people.

I've opted for cremation so finding 6 people to carry a casket won't be necessary.

[OldCurlyWolf]

Been out of HS 46 years. Out of 29, 25 of us are still kicking. A couple are not in good health. We will probably be fewer at our 50th.

[Abraham]

Cremation is 'the way' to get one's carcass disposed of.

Should it be expensive or should it be inexpensive?

The cost for an average funeral with all it's attendant folderal (unless your wealthy and you don't mind) is in the cost neighborhood of buying a car, sometimes a compact and sometimes a Lamborghini.

That shouldn't be.

I've a few friends in the funeral industry. Believe me they want you to spend a bundle...

Don't spend a bundle on funeral cost.

When it's my turn to be a corpse, just let the buzzards eat me or cremate me. Sounds grim, but that's what some cultures do. Good for them. Spending a ton of moola on dead loved ones is just feeling guilty and easily being taken advantage of...

Be cremated.

If you spend over $1500.00 for doing so, you're being taken advantage of...

Consider this: Do you think anything will matter (concerning your death or for that matter much of anything else..., but I digress) in a million years?

No, it won't.

In the long run (actually in the short run relatively speaking...) no one's death is important.

Why?

Because we all die without leaving a lasting legacy beyond a few thousand years (that's assuming you're in the minority of the eminently rememorable, like Shakespeare. In the long run if humanity is still kicking, few will remember us as our recorded history at this point is a paltry 10,000 years.

None of us is important.

When time passes we will naturally be forgotten and why shouldn't we be...?

We like to think we're important...

We're not, and that's not morbid, just the truth...

[WTR]

At one time, El Paso did not have a creamatorium. You had to go to Las Cruces. However, you had to be embalmed to cross State lines. So you had to pay for a needless embament before a body could be cremated.

[Bitter Clinger]

I placed my BIL on my NFA Trust so my wife would not have to deal with my firearms.

SWMBO does have strict instructions about my funeral. Place me in the Vette, set it on fire while "MA TOVU" (Numbers 24:5, "How goodly are your tents O'Jacob", traditionally sung when entering the place of worship) is sung to the tune of "Amazing Grace" accompanied by a bagpiper.

My only concern is if I don't go first...

[Oldgringo]

Mrs Oldgringo and I are giving our bodies to science. There is no point in having a funeral. The folk who won't come to see us when we're alive probably wouldn't show up for a funeral and if they did, we wouldn't know it. So there, funerals are for the living anyway.