DR Jeanne, that is very sad. Were they in an accident together? Even when we don't stay close to certain people their passing can hit us very hard, especially those we grew up with.
No, not an accident. Several months apart. I don't have all the details yet.
That is extra hard to hear the news so far after it happened.
The last time my parents visited my mom's family in Germany, she found out that her father had died a couple of years before that. She actually had never known her dad and was never was told that he was even still alive.
George, a similar thing happened to me. I grew up being told that all of my grandparents had died. When I was in my twenties my mother told me that her mother was still living and she wanted us to visit. I was unable to feel any love for someone I'd never known at all, someone who I thought was dead. I felt cheated, too, because I would have really liked to have had a grandparent when I was growing up. I chose not to visit (it was out of state), as did my mother, though I never knew her reasons. If this had happened when I was older I think I would have at least phoned and tried to establish a connection, but I had no interest then.
