Young Lives Snuffed Out By Fate

[Krauter]

Just heard about this today. A 19 year old girl from my old high school (graduate a year before me) died yesterday out snowmobiling.

This just kind of hit me hard for some reason, thinking how young she was and how well though of she was in the community. This, as well as another young student who died earlier this year after a long battle with cancer mark two young lives snuffed out by fate that I have had the privilege of knowing.

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Belle+River+teen+dies+snowmobile+crash/4231771/story.html


Do what you will with this post, maybe post a story of someone you knew who just had that bad timing.

God bless,

Krauter

[Chad]

My senior year before the first football game of the season, a player killed himself before the game, and he wasn't found until after the game had started.

A friend of mine all through High School had gotten a girl pregnant before his 21st birthday, and on his birthday he went out to a bar. Instead of having a designated driver he went alone and on his way back to his girlfriend he either passed out or fell asleep and slammed into a telephone poll. The car then caught fire and was burned up.

I didn't know her personally, but a girl from my town's neighboring high school died on the way to her High School Graduation in a car crash.

My condolences, but death is all around us whether we like it or not, there's no escape. I'll try to keep religion out of it, but it is best to to believe there is something more than just this life. That's what I believe.

[Krauter]

Cheers mate, my condolences.

I don't know if religion has anything to do with it, but to me, it's just the thought of someone so young and having so much opportunity and potential ahead that gets cut short that's a shame.

death is all around us whether we like it or not, there's no escape.

Ain't that the truth :nope: Sad, but true.

[Sailor Steve]

I'm sorry to hear it. When I was in 7th Grade the father of a kid in our class killed himself. In high school I read about a student who was killed in a car crash.

It will happen, and the older you get the more it will happen. Pretty much all you can really do is live with it, and hope it doesn't happen to anyone close to you.

...but it is best to to believe there is something more than just this life.
But what if you don't? Does believing it really help? I don't know.

[yubba]

I have more lost freinds than live, too all who have lost , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8AeV8Jbx6M&feature=related

[Betonov]

Lost one friend 3 years ago, commited suicide (21), just out of the blue. We never knew he was seeing a therapist.
We coined a saying, dark saying: the only time we can get the class together is on a funeral.

[Platapus]

In the first 10 years after highschool, 11 in my senior class were already dead. Granted I came from a big highschool, but still. 11 is a pretty big number no matter how big your highschool is.

[Freiwillige]

Yea thought's of your own mortality can make one feel helpless. I find a good way to deal with death is just to remind myself that everybody passes and it is the normal cycle of things.

I can think of two occasions in my time here that I almost found death, Once as a young pre-teen I was swimming at one of my good friends neighbors house. The houses were separated by a drainage ditch. My friend did not have a pool but his neighbor who was 10, 2 years younger than us did.

We swam all morning and then we decided that we were bored and wanted to eat and go skatebording so we left and went back to my friends house next door. We ate and took a nap on the couch watching tv and then woke up and went skateboarding. By afternoon we were blocks away by my house and around dinner time my family gave him a ride home. As we arrived we saw fire trucks, police cars, ambulance, helicopters you name it.

So we dropped him off and his parents were in the driveway watching the spectacle and I figured I would see him at school the next day.

I did not see him for almost a week, turns out that his ten year old friend and neighbor was brutally murdered by a homeless man in the very backyard we had just left. The back of the house faces the interstate and access road, so they assumed that the homeless man was wandering down the road and just hopped the fence and committed the crime. I found out later that we had just left not to long before the murder.

Years later as a teenager me and some friends went to go check out a newly discovered mineshaft in the AZ desert not far from Phoenix. AS we climbed down the steel service ladder there was a 4 foot jump one had to make to a side tunnel because that is where the ladder ended. But the tunnel still went down another 1,000 feet. They all jumped fine but as my turn came I landed right on the edge and was doing that cartoony thing where your trying to keep your balance and your arms are doing circles. I did that for what seemed like an eternity and I felt myself falling back towards the abyss when suddenly I regained my balance.

Life is a wild ride.

[sharkbit]

Yea thought's of your own mortality can make one feel helpless. I find a good way to deal with death is just to remind myself that everybody passes and it is the normal cycle of things.

I can think of two occasions in my time here that I almost found death, Once as a young pre-teen I was swimming at one of my good friends neighbors house. The houses were separated by a drainage ditch. My friend did not have a pool but his neighbor who was 10, 2 years younger than us did.

We swam all morning and then we decided that we were bored and wanted to eat and go skatebording so we left and went back to my friends house next door. We ate and took a nap on the couch watching tv and then woke up and went skateboarding. By afternoon we were blocks away by my house and around dinner time my family gave him a ride home. As we arrived we saw fire trucks, police cars, ambulance, helicopters you name it.

So we dropped him off and his parents were in the driveway watching the spectacle and I figured I would see him at school the next day.

I did not see him for almost a week, turns out that his ten year old friend and neighbor was brutally murdered by a homeless man in the very backyard we had just left. The back of the house faces the interstate and access road, so they assumed that the homeless man was wandering down the road and just hopped the fence and committed the crime. I found out later that we had just left not to long before the murder.

Years later as a teenager me and some friends went to go check out a newly discovered mineshaft in the AZ desert not far from Phoenix. AS we climbed down the steel service ladder there was a 4 foot jump one had to make to a side tunnel because that is where the ladder ended. But the tunnel still went down another 1,000 feet. They all jumped fine but as my turn came I landed right on the edge and was doing that cartoony thing where your trying to keep your balance and your arms are doing circles. I did that for what seemed like an eternity and I felt myself falling back towards the abyss when suddenly I regained my balance.

Life is a wild ride.

Dude-that gave me the chills.:o

Somebody is looking out for you.

[Sailor Steve]

Somebody is looking out for you.
Or, sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you.

Was somebody looking out for Waylon Jennings, or was him giving the Big Bopper his seat just random chance?

[Herr-Berbunch]

Today was the funeral of a 19 year old who lived in my village, died of a brain tumour on 30th Jan - the day of his sister's birthday (and the day she went back to collage!). It was his second tumour and all was expected to go as well as the first!

His whole family are one of the nicest you'd ever meet, all the kids are exactly how you'd want your kids to be, no drugs, no fighting, not anti-social, but pleasant and outgoing - they'd play with my 2 year old daughter and chat to Betty, who is 85, when we all bumped into one another in our local fairtrade cafe!

Devastating, just devastating.

[Freiwillige]

The point is that we are all riding a fine line between life and death everyday, The decisions we make can be one decision away from eternity.

Fate is a cruel mistress and she has a whip.

[Armistead]

For me it's always easier to say fate is in control of these things, only way I can make sense out of it.

If some higher power is guiding death daily, scary thought.

[sharkbit]

The decisions we make can be one decision away from eternity.



How true. We tell our kids, life is about choices.

I didn't know the kid but 4 years ago last month, a 15 y.o kid and a friend tried to cross one of the major, 6 lane, east-west freeways here in Denver at 11 at night. The 15 yo made it across the west bound lanes but was struck by a car in the eastbound lanes. He was thrown 70 feet back into the westbound lanes. His buddy made it across.
My wife and I were coming back from a event we attended for my wife's work. I was driving westbound in the left lane and hit the body laying in the lane. I never saw him until the last second. Even if I had time, I was in traffic and couldn't swerve or brake.
We pulled off about a quarter mile from the scene and called 911. Needless to say, it was pretty messy.

Pretty bad experience. One wrong choice and so many lives changed. I still think about that night.

[Freiwillige]

How true. We tell our kids, life is about choices.

I didn't know the kid but 4 years ago last month, a 15 y.o kid and a friend tried to cross one of the major, 6 lane, east-west freeways here in Denver at 11 at night. The 15 yo made it across the west bound lanes but was struck by a car in the eastbound lanes. He was thrown 70 feet back into the westbound lanes. His buddy made it across.
My wife and I were coming back from a event we attended for my wife's work. I was driving westbound in the left lane and hit the body laying in the lane. I never saw him until the last second. Even if I had time, I was in traffic and couldn't swerve or brake.
We pulled off about a quarter mile from the scene and called 911. Needless to say, it was pretty messy.

Pretty bad experience. One wrong choice and so many lives changed. I still think about that night.

That had to be traumatic for you.

[Armistead]

That had to be traumatic for you.


I'll never forget when I worked with the ambulance service in a small town, we got a call. Took us forever to find the house down a long narrow country road. Old small two story house, one of those steep narrow stairways. We found a old lady in her bed dead. I bet she had a pile of crap stacked a foot high underneath her. She had been dead for a few days, hard as a brick.

After pronounced dead, we had to get her down. We had to basically break her back to fold her, but doubt she weighed 100lbs. As I started down the stairs her mouth opened. I actually dropped her. I can't describe the smell. I vomitted, I can still smell it over 20 years later.

Worse....was always dead children.....

[sharkbit]

I'll never forget when I worked.....

I noticed the past tense. After an experience like that, it is no wonder.
I can't imagine some of the sights that paramedics see and how they block them out. Seeing things like that, I would think you have to block them out somehow or you'd go nuts.

I'm a aircraft mecanic for a charter/air ambulance company. I've helped off-load patients from our medical planes occasionally(it is something I try to avoid if at all possible). The children are the worst, especially the infants.

[sharkbit]

After pronounced dead, we had to get her down. We had to basically break her back to fold her, but doubt she weighed 100lbs. As I started down the stairs her mouth opened. I actually dropped her. I can't describe the smell. I vomitted, I can still smell it over 20 years later.



I've heard many stories of pilots working for small freight companies flying deceased people, alone,.....at night. Then the gases start escaping the body and it starts groaning. :o

[Armistead]

I noticed the past tense. After an experience like that, it is no wonder.
I can't imagine some of the sights that paramedics see and how they block them out. Seeing things like that, I would think you have to block them out somehow or you'd go nuts.

I'm a aircraft mecanic for a charter/air ambulance company. I've helped off-load patients from our medical planes occasionally(it is something I try to avoid if at all possible). The children are the worst, especially the infants.

Back when I did it, town was so small we were basically paid volunteers, got paid $10 per time we went out. After two years of training while working this way as a EMT, finally completed my paramedic training.

You do see a lot of gore, suicides, wrecks, ect. Somehow in jest you learn to ignore it, sometimes you couldn't, but pretended you did in front of others. Today they offer a lot more training and support on the emotional side. Inside you know your helping others, so that gets you through it.

After that I worked with a friend part time in his business cleaning up remains after death...gathering body parts, gore, bleaching blood, ect...That was good money part time, but you were like a fireman, on call at a minutes notice.

He has a large business today over 20 years later, branched out in several states, one thing about death, business is always booming, he's now a millionaire. Probably one of the first to do it professionally.

[sharkbit]

After that I worked with a friend part time in his business cleaning up remains after death...gathering body parts, gore, bleaching blood, ect...That was good money part time, but you were like a fireman, on call at a minutes notice.

He has a large business today over 20 years later, branched out in several states, one thing about death, business is always booming, he's now a millionaire. Probably one of the first to do it professionally.

That is a job I'll pass on. I guess you just have to have a knack for it or something.

After the accident with the body on the highway, the underside of the car was quite a mess. We got it back from the impound lot the same way. I tried washing it but I underestimated the extent of the mess. I called the police department and they put me in touch with a crime scene cleaner who came out, took the car for a couple of hours to clean it.

I asked him how he got into the job. He just said he found it interesting and had a knack for it. Did a lot of training and has a bunch of equipment. He not only does the bloody, gory stuff, but he also is contracted with the police dept. to clean up meth labs as well.

I'm not suprised your friend is a millionaire-this guy charged me $300 for about two hours of work which I was glad to pay.

He did a good job, but told me he wasn't sure he got everything. The underside was pretty coated and there are a lot of nooks and crannies.

He didn't get everything.....
Long story short-the insurance company ended up totaling the vehicle due to the odor.

[CCIP]

Sorry to hear about these stories - it is always tragic.

I had a similar one myself. A couple of years ago a guy who was 2 years younger than me, and back in high school used to help organize LAN parties with me, died in a car crash. More accurately, he crashed his car while driving on a country road at night and was trapped alone in the car, which caught fire. When the car was found and the emergency services got there, presumably a few hours later, there wasn't much left of him :(

Really left that same sort of disturbing impression with me that some others of you have described. Way, way before his time.