When your peers start to die around you

This is very hard for everyone when people you love and care about as friends start to die. Even though this often starts very young for many people I didn't start to lose people I cared about that much until my Grandmother who helped raise me to 21 passed away in Seattle when I was about 30 years old. I drove north from California to Seattle in my Toyota Longbed Truck with a 6 pack Cabover Camper that I owned then with my 4 year old son since I was a single father then. My mother was riding in a Cadillac with a friend of hers from Seattle. We had met in Mt. Shasta where my mother was attending a religious conference and her friend was driving her north to meet her mother so we could say "Goodbye" because she was now 90 years old. When we reached about 5 hours from Seattle my Grandmother passed away. When she passed I thought I was having a nervous breakdown but i kept driving anyway because I was always taught to be stoic as a man. However, soon I learned that my grandmother had passed away and what I was experiencing was the bittersweet of her death. Though she wanted to see us both before she died the experience was too much for her so she passed away from the Good Stress of wanting to see us before she died. When you are old Good Stress and Bad Stress often (either one) can kill you at 90. So, this is what happened.

This was the first time someone that was a peer who raised me from birth to age 21 when i was in college and living at home at the time who had been there most of my life had died.

Though I had lost my father's father in 1970 and his wife my grandmother by 1972 I had been away from them mostly since 1952 except for a few visits so the distance cushioned their deaths from me some. But, Nana who mostly raised me from birth was someone very close to me until she was 80 and was starting to slip away from us then. But, we never forgot her either but I hadn't seen her since she left California since she was 80 because i hadn't visited Seattle during those years.

So, I think Nana was the first peer this close to me dying in my life who had ALWAYS been there for me since birth.