Rest in peace, my friend

So sorry for your loss! May he rest in peace and be remembered.

 

I'm sorry for your loss. When people have played a significant part in our own lives it can be heart breaking to learn of their passing. Maybe the completion of your personal journey will be a nice way to honour his life and memory. What do you think?

 

Very nice tribute.

Ah someone who takes the time to engage with another human being. He is special indeed.

I disagree, it is not finished. The spark has been lit by the "energy" he lit within you. Carry on his energy.

 

@old tacoma, that is a very nice tribute, and it shows how important it is that we help each other where we can. I suspect your friend got a lot of value from his connection to you. I wish you well through your grief.

 

I lost two people from my distant past this year who played important roles in my life today. The first was my high school/college girlfriend. We dated for 3 years and while we got along well, nothing ever "happened" between us, and she eventually came out as a lesbian. I lost track of her as college went on but I know that she became a teacher and a principal of a local Catholic grade school, while living her life very much as she saw fit and keeping no secrets. I had looked her up a few times and was impressed with how completely she seemed to be in charge of her life, and I felt that she was a great role model for my eventual coming out. From the obit it sounded as though she may have had cancer. We drifted apart after I switched colleges and shortly after became obsessed with someone - my second loss of this past year.

I went to a mixer at my new college and almost immediately met a guy who I clicked with and eventually roomed with for nearly 3 years. He was a partying type, allegedly straight but I had my doubts. We were inseparable and I was obsessed with him, and although I envisioned a standard future with a family, his constant presence in my life forced me to face the feelings that I wasn't so much denying, as trying to understand. When push came to shove, he claimed he wasn't gay but that I would not be his type, and after graduation he came out once I was safely not a part of his life anymore. I was crushed, and that and a few other negative experiences convinced me that the gay life was not for me, and I finally married and had a couple kids.

The roommate contacted me out of the blue a year or so after I came out, and we had a lengthy text conversation and I realized how completely different we were. He never did graduate, had a few partners but nothing long lasting, and he had worked as a bartender at a chain restaurant for two decades. We followed each other on social media but never spoke again, and I found out this fall that he had died. He was close to 60, still at the restaurant, still unattached and his dog had died a year or so before. He apparently partied with a work crowd that was mostly 20 or 30 years younger than he was, and from comments on his page, I suspect her took his own life. The recurring comment was that he "didn't realize how much we all loved him".

Two very different people who each left their own marks on my life and my coming out experience. Even though my interactions with them were decades ago, I still think of them. My life now is so surprisingly happy and stable, despite all the fears I had about coming out. All I can hope is that perhaps someone will find my experience helpful or at least worth remembering as well. rest in peace my friends, and all those who have left their mark on our lives. I hope that whatever state of being they are now in, that they know that they mattered.