How do you wrap your head around somebody being gone for the rest of your life?

[Anonymous]

I can’t quite get my head around it. How somebody could be there your entire life and then suddenly they’re gone. They’ll never come for holidays. I can never call them on the phone. I can’t visit them. They can’t visit me. I can’t talk to them and they talk back. It hurts too bad. I don’t know how people deal with this unless they are that uncaring.

[MannMitAntworten]

First real love break up? If yes, you will go through a mourning period. As with all things, time, will eventually move you forward and you will think less and less of them till one day someone else comes along catching your attention and overwrites the memory.


Now, if they passed away, it kind of goes the same. way. However, their memory burns deeper. This goes for both close family, close friends, and the loss of a significant other. Granted, if enough ‘death’ occurs in your world, I get a sense even this can change inside you to some degree … speaking from personal experience from the lose of extremely close family, a best pal, and a significant other and a host of a lot of other people who have passed away.


Time doesn’t heal all. Enough ‘time’ just gets you used to things being forever different.

[RavVid]

I immediately thought a girl has up and left you. When you are dedicated and it turns out they weren't it is difficult especially as it invalidates the entire past you had with them.

Most of us have that experience.

[Asker]

I’m talking about a permanent loss.. not that

[RavVid]

Oh. Yes it is hard to deal with loss. I think it is best to think of what they were & meant to you and they do live on in your memory of them

[Screenwriter]

It's not about being uncaring. If someone is gone because they're left your relationship, or because they're dead and gone, there is nothing you can do to change this. You can change your attitude about it.

You have to live and enjoy the life you have. You also have to mourn their loss. It is tough. Especially when it concerns people you love, or who've brought you into this world and cared for you.

You'll always miss them, but it is the way of life. We have each other for a short time. So, we have to revel in the time we have and do the best with it.

If you're struggling with your feelings of loss, see a counselor to get through this. It is doable. Then you can remember the joys and carry that with you and to others.

[Amy_Mi]

You don’t.

You learn to breathe around the ache.

Loss doesn’t disappear, it transforms.

It becomes the silence between your laughter, the strength behind your calm, the softness in your wisdom.

You stop waiting for the pain to fade and start learning how to carry it with grace.

Healing isn’t forgetting, it’s remembering without breaking.

Because some absences never leave, they just teach you how to stand taller in their echo.

That’s how you move forward not by letting go, but by becoming.

[msc545]

The death of a friend or a loved one hurts like hell. Unfortunately, it's also a part of life. I've experienced this many times.

At first, you feel like the Earth has fallen out from under you, but as the days and months go by, you will slowly recover from it. It will never completely stop hurting, but you will learn to live with it. The pain that you feel right now will slowly fade, and the good memories will remain with you.

[RingOfFire]

It's not easy, but what's the alternative?

Sometimes you have to realize that you can't ever be happy if you don't accept the things you cannot change. Happiness is a choice and that's the only way to achieve it.

[Asker]

I don’t know, try to invent a Time Machine.. I guess that might be a possibility

[RingOfFire]

I understand the feeling of wanting that. But life is too precious to waste time on the impossible. I've been reborn several times in my life. It is possible to start fresh and find fulfillment. It's never too late. The key is to look forward and not backward.

[exitseven]

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the death of my best friend. I am still trying to make sense of it. I have been thinking a lot about all the things we went through together.

[RingOfFire]

I lost my best friend 15 years ago. And another close lifetime friend 2 years ago. As you get older, the losses accelerate and begin to wonder when your turn is coming. The only way to go on is to accept the things you cannot change and realize that you have to make the best you can of every day on earth and be thankful for the things that you still have.

[exitseven]

@RingOfFire yes but he had moved away 5 years, ago. We were supposed to have dinner but Covid screwed it up and the next thing I knew he was gone.

[RingOfFire]

Reminds of how fragile life is.

[exitseven]

@RingOfFire yes he had cancer but he told me he was successfully treated. I did not hear from him for a while. I poked around and found his obituary online. None of his sisters even let me know how bad it was.

[RingOfFire]

You just never know what you never know.

My mother passed away 2 years ago at 93. A few days ago, while my sister and I were going through her things we found printouts of these emails she had been exchanging with her high school boyfriend from 70 years earlier. Nothing bad, just friendly exchange.

After years of communicating with him we saw an e-mail where she was trying to contact him and getting no reply. She wrote several panicked e-mails mentioning she tried to call and it always went to voicemail. Then we found a letter she wrote to him telling him that she was worried about not getting any answers to her e-mail and calls so she wrote him a letter.

The letter was returned to her and it had "Deceased" written on it by the post office. She had it all saved with her things.

[exitseven]

@RingOfFire Wow, that is amazing but this is what happens.
I worked in Cincinnati for a few weeks putting in a computer system in a couple of department stores in the city. There was a girl who was the assistant to the store manager. We went out a couple of times. The job was winding down and I was supposed to leave in a couple of days. We went out and were parked across the river from Riverfront stadium. She told me that she got pregnant in high school and had to drop out., She was a few weeks before her due date and she fell down some stairs and had a miscarriage. She told me that the baby was going to be named Shawna. Then she started crying and all I could do was just hold her. Later when I was back t my motel room she called me on the phone and we stayed up most of the night. She told me that she had really fallen for me.
We wrote to each other and called each other on the phone which in those days was expensive. I sent her a gift for her birthday in January. I never heard back. I wrote to her a couple of more times with no reply. I figured she realized how futile this relationship was and just gave up on it.
Fast forward about 20 years and i am watching the Red sox play the Reds and they show Riverfront stadium. It made me think of her so I poked around online and could not find anything about her. I thought maybe she got married and had a different last name. So i checked to see if her father still lived in the same house. I found his obituary and it said that he was predeceased by a daughter. It did not say when she died but maybe she died a long time ago and that is why she stopped writing.

[RingOfFire]

That is so sad. So very sad.

Believe it or not there is more for me to tell on this topic. But before this next thing, I meant to mention that the letter with "Deceased" written on it that we found with my mothers' things was still sealed.

Amazingly I have another story of my own on this that happened recently.

When I was 18 I went from the Northeast where I grew up to Arizona to go to college. I met a girl at school almost as soon as I got there and we fell madly in love and dated for about 6 years. Her family lived in Chicago (later moved to AZ). We stayed at each others' family homes on vacations and summers.

One summer we had a bad argument and she went home to her parents house and me to mine.

I was broken and we never spoke again. It was like having my heart ripped out. I had been getting ready to propose to her.

As you did, I occasionally looked her up online over the years since the Internet came about. I read some things about her and saw she was married and living in AZ still. She apparently married about 10 years after we broke up. That was about the time I moved back to the Northeast.

In late 2024 I looked her up online again for the first time in several years. And as you did, I found her obituary. She had just passed away days before I found it at the age of 69.

On the comments in the obituary, was a comment from a guy who said he lived in Chicago many years ago and that he was dating her one summer (which happened to be the summer we broke up). He said she was the most beautiful and amazing woman he ever met and he fell in love with her and asked her to marry him. But she told him that she could not because she loved someone else and was hoping he would come back to her.

I never knew any of that until I read it there. I am still in shock.

[AviatorTom]

You think what they would want you to do, not mourn forever, move on. You will never forget them but there are other people in the world you can share your life with

[ManOnFire]

You really can't. It gets easier, but you never really get over it. You might also never be the same again either.

[Nikki1989]

Change is life.

You don't “wrap your head around it” all at once; you integrate the loss piece by piece over time.

[jahaims]

You don't really. You just get used to the pain so it seems less painful eventually. If you are missing a loved one try doing something you used to do together that you know they would love for you to be doing.

[strateguy632]

Why? It is simple. People die it is expected.

[LiamJHayden]

I lost my mom at 16 and my dad at 19. I am now 30. It never goes away.

[Asker]

how did that happen?

[Yoursweetgirl]

I've been the one who's gone and y'all brought it upon yourselves 😂

[Keyboardkat]

How do you know?

[Shy_Steve]

You can only focus on the people you do have in life and enjoy being with them.

[Anonymous]

Welcome to my world and what i go through everyday. I lost to many people and pets that it fucked me up inside mentally

[Godihateyou]

Burn everything they ever gave you and fuck their little sister.

[ChicoFromThe305]

I couldn't even tell you, my condolences

[Anonymous]

What happened? Did you guys fight?

[Rosemaiden]

I don't let things go out of my control...

[Keyboardkat]

Until you meet the one who WILL take you out of your controlled existence! There is always someone like that!