From The Past: November 6, 2007

It catches me off guard when someone from my graduating class, the class of 1990, dies.

One girl died in a car accident not long after graduation. She may have been 19. I know of a guy dying of cancer that was very sudden and very fast-acting. The most recent guy was my age and I have no idea how he died.

There may have been many more deaths than the three I mentioned, but those are the ones I remember right off. I knew the faces that went with the names in the newspaper. I remember the girl who died in the car accident from freshman year science class. I remember the guy who died of cancer from second grade at a private school. The latest man who died, sat in front of me in sophomore math. He had dark hair that curled and was right below the bottom of his neck. When the bell would ring to end class, he loved saying, “Catch you on the flip side.” That is what I remember about him, that, and he smiled a lot.

Get this; the guy I mentioned earlier who died of cancer had a brother who became a cancer doctor because of his brother. This cancer doctor is now one of my mom’s cancer doctors and he told me his brother is the reason he became an oncologist.

It just makes you wonder, if his brother never had cancer and died, would he have had any interest in that line of work. Would he have become a doctor at all?

Some people believe things happen for a reason. Some people believe when it’s your time to die, it’s your time to die. However, I LOVE what Joy Behar had to say regarding this topic. I am paraphrasing here, “Yes, but what if you’re on an airplane and its THE PILOTS time to die!” … Does this mean it was everyone else’s time to die that was on that plane? I don’t think so.

Update 2023: I stopped keeping track of deaths of people I graduated with. There’s no telling how many others there have been since I originally posted back in 2007.