It always feels terrible to me, that this happens. And yet, what else can we really do?

Thank you, Louise. I feel pretty hopeful about his destiny, but it was certainly shock. One of those totally out-of-the-blue phone calls.

I can understand why that would stay with you, Janet!

I am sorry for the loss of Robert, whom I never met but was grateful for, with all th3e music you shared that came from him...

"One of those totally out-of-the-blue phone calls."

I had one of those a few years ago. A total shock.

I'd never read that poem before. Sort of wish I hadn't now.

That last line about turning to their own affairs sounds heartless, as if the sad and horrifying death had never happened and we simply move on. But we really don't, do we? And I know in my own case, they often show up in dreams.

My sympathies, Maclin. I will offer my communion for Robert tomorrow.
In my experience, although we turn back to our affairs, we get blindsided every so often by how much we feel the loss.

It's not so much a sense of pain with me as a sort of shock that the person is not there. I still get that about my father, who died in 2001. Two days after the WTC bombing. That was a weird time.

Well yes, Maclin. Aside from a few really painful moments, it's usually when I see or hear something and think, "Oh, I have to tell/ask Mother about that." And then I realize. I'm amazed at how often that happens because I'm sure I didn't think about her that much before she got sick. There are a thousand things that I would like to know that nobody in the world knows now. I tell, my children to ask me questions now because they will be sorry if they don't.

AMDG

These losses also remind me once again how important it is to always be mindful of the fact that this could happen to any of us at any moment. Since my friend Rita, who was my age, died about 5 or 6 years ago, when I'm with my friends, I always try to be aware of the fact that this might be the last time I see them. So many of them are in their 60s and 70s now. I don't ever want to leave them in a way that would make me sorry if I never saw them again.

AMDG

When you deal with 18-to-20-year-olds on a daily basis, you realise how short "living memory" can be. Taught a class today where nobody was aware of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Gosh, Paul.

I miss my elders (grandparents' generation) terribly, particularly since 2010 when the last one died - my Nan's youngest sister.

I'm glad I know that my mother and her siblings loved living in the 50's and were really happy. I must make sure to convey to my children as much of it as I can that I've heard about.

I'm glad I know as much as I do (not enough though) about my mother's and grandmother's childhoods.

Truly disturbing occurrence about 12 years ago, when my daughter was around 6 or 7: "Mum, what was it like in the olden days?" (referring to the 70's!!)

I nearly fell out of my chair!

I'm discovering the limits of living memory, too. My sister has been going through our grandmother's letters and is finding passages that contradict oft-repeated family stories, sometimes in mutually inconsistent ways. We have inconsistent family trees from different sources, too, including differences in the number of my great-grandfather's wives! (Although even if my grandmother were still alive, her capacity for self-delusion and her desire to make life form a suitable narrative would probably keep us from figuring out the truth.)

I'm all too familiar with the experience in Maclin's first paragraph.

What gets me about kids not knowing about the past is that I always did. It must be because I read a lot and I watch old movies and I listened in on grown-up conversations. This makes me wonder if kids don't do this anymore.

AMDG

That is pretty great.