I don't think of people in my past except I do sometimes think of those who have passed. My best friend who passed away in grade 3, my first boyfriend who passed away in 1981, my brother who passed away in 2000 and I give a thought as to how I would like to know them now.

But no, I don't go looking for past acquaintances to see what happened to them. I have had four friends who have passed away in the past 3 years and they were all on either side of 60 - way too young. I don't need any more.

Yeah, I looked up the guy who was my best man in the wedding of 1974 (since divorced) and he died several years ago.

A month or two ago, I thought of a woman who I dated for several months between marriages. It took a lot longer to find her (name changes). She married twice after me and died last year in some remote part of Wisconsin. She was in her 60s and the obit did not reveal anything as to cause of death.

And, of course, I look up myself on a regular basis to see if some nefarious person is using my name to do good in the world. I have been fortunate that way!

I do it from time to time :-) And often with old beaus or childhood friends. Sometimes I find nothing but I have yet to find one that has passed. And I was pleased to find that my first love - a guy I dated in college - has had an extremely successful career as a physician. But on the other side of the country. And he still has those same amazing blue eyes that melted my heart way back then! LOL!

Oh, Elizabeth! That is a shock. I wonder if something caused him to turn.

I occasionally look up people from my past, but it becomes a rabbit hole and time waste. I'm sometimes interested in former colleagues, but a few minutes on the internet can tell me where they've moved onto. Like Jim, I look myself up to be aware of what the findings are.

I don't look them up much, but read my original home town Newspaper on

line, and the Obits are full of people I knew and/or grew up with. Have to

stop reading it, I guess. Even lost an Aunt by marriage .....no one left to

contact me about it anymore. That made me sad.

I do look people up, because I'm nosy. More distressing for me though, is each High School reunion. I'm still relatively young (<60) and my class of 294 people has lost 18 people that I know of. Even more concerning is the fact that the majority died of various types of cancer.

I spend many hours doing genealogy research, and it's always a bit disconcerting to find death notices for people who are younger than I am.

I lost one of my best HS friends when I was in grad school post college. To be honest, I really was sort of the loner outsider, but recently I did go to a HS reunion. Where I found out that one of the truly nice people I knew back then had also passed away.

We were a small high school, but out of about 60 classmates, I believe 4 have passed on. AND I would have loved to have connected over the years with three of them. Maybe also four or five of those still on this plane.

Elizabeth.....that would be shocking....and horrific. So glad you missed out on that one.

I do Google people....but nothing to report.

I don't know.....as we get older we do have a tendency to think about the past. I have looked up past friends and boyfriends, curious to see how they turned out.

I don't do Facebook and rarely look up anyone from the past but a couple weeks ago I was at the grocery and noticed a woman who looked vaguely familiar but couldn't place her. A couple aisles later I saw her again and a name popped into my head. I looked at her and said 'is your name is Kathleen?' She looked at me for a bit and said 'Jack is that you?'. It was a girl I dated for about a year, 35 years ago while in college! I hadn't seen her since a buddy's wedding in the mid 80s. She had just recently moved to Kansas City after living in Nebraska and Minnesota since graduating college. She was married to the guy she started dating after we broke up and had 5 kids and 4 grandkids.

I did that last year. I was having lunch with a friend (we are both widows) and she said it was too bad the " Ohio" boys didn't pop back into our lives! That got me curious so I did a search for mine, She couldn't remember the last name of the guy she dated. We met them when we were 17 and they were in the Air National Guard at the base near our town for their two weeks training. Two of the nicest guys and we dated them during those two weeks . When they left we exchanged many letters but lost contact after a year or so. They were going to come back to see us when they had a break but that never happened. We thought they must have met someone new in their hometown of Ohio. I found that " my guy" had passed away in 2016. His obituary had his picture and a nice write-up. He was a high school teacher, married with three kids. We couldn't think of the last name of her guy so I wasn't able to look his up. I did look on the comments of that obit. Though in case his name was on it but didn't see it. Maybe he had passed away too by that time.

I had that happen. I had a good buddy at my first job out of college. He didn't like the job, but worked for his FIL. I knew he always wanted to be a park ranger or something such. A few years ago, he popped into my head, and I wondered if he ever made it to the woods. I found his obituary, he had died in his very early 50's. That made me sad.

I don't. I've kept in contact with the people from various stages of my life I've wanted to keep in contact with and the others, well, life happens. The same reasons why I haven't felt a compelling need to keep up contacts with so many of them (nor them with me) are equally applicable for why I don't feel a need to contact any.

And, I have no curiosity about any of them. I took a pass on my most recent high school reunion. I've been to two over the years and they served as a reminder that the people I found to be uninteresting during HS are still uninteresting.

LOL

My HS class was enormous because we were on double shifts for two years while waiting for a new school to be built. (Those darn baby boomers! Those cheap taxpayers!) It was close to 900. A reunion is being organized now for this fall, so I have heard that at least a third of the class is deceased. I hated HS and only attended one reunion early on. One of my grammar school classmates called me last month, urging me to attend this year. We agreed that we'd be more interested in a reunion of classmates from K - 8.

Elizabeth -- My JRHS beau became CEO of an international company, moved with his family to the same suburb where my DH, DS and I lived -- and committed suicide when both our sons were in HS.

Wow...chisue. Your story is more shocking than mine.

My sister's best friend was raped and murdered when they were seniors in high school.

Many of my friends died in the 30s in the 1980s and 1990s, and it's been very difficult for me to make more friends at this time, but I do not try to find people from the distant past because so many of them died in the distant past. One of the reasons I moved away from San Francisco in November 1984 was that it was getting too depressing to live there.

Sometimes I do. I have been trying to find a friend from the mid '70's. I know she was married to a policeman, but I doubt they are still married because he was a bad alcoholic. She had a daughter, and I have tried to find her, hoping to find her mother. She was originally from Brooklyn, NY. She liked fancy goldfish, back when I was raising them, and I gave her some fish. She wanted to borrow one of my fish to breed, but I didn't want to let him go...because the last one I loaned to her, I ended up giving her, because she didn't want to give him back. This one was a show fish and I didn't want to part with him. I never heard from her again after that.

I went to a really small school (22 in my graduating class) and I looked up a boy who was a year older. He was a genius....was Valedictorian. I was shocked to find out he had become a lawyer and was in a lot of trouble for bilking an old guy out of his life savings. I checked to see if he was in prison, and couldn't find him there, but found him on Facebook and it said he was in Poland. I don't know if that is true...his idea of a joke, or what. I didn't send a friend request.

I looked up a girl I knew in high school and found out she died a few years ago. Actually, found out another girl I knew had died also. I had only seen her once since school, and I had run into her at the zoo. She was there with her little daughter. Another girl I knew was murdered, but she had moved away and didn't finish school with me.

A lot of the people I know have died. There are a couple of guys I know that I look for every now and then in the prison population or in obituaries. I didn't go to school with them, but they have both been in prison, and one of them is a drug addict. The other was in a very bad car wreck and broke his back in several places and I know he has been very depressed, and wouldn't surprise me if he killed himself.

It's sad. As I get older though, I become more accepting of my age and what lies ahead . When I turned 60, every morning I would wake up and feel depressed about getting older. Now I am 72 and I hardly think about it any more. It is what it is, and I accept it.

A year or so ago I looked up a guy I casually dated back in the 60s. He was the only guy my own age I ever went out with. He went to a Catholic boy's school and I was his date for all the dances. Other than that we were just friends. Lost contact after high school and now we are Facebook friends.

I also found the kids I used to babysit. I stay in touch with the youngest and I have reconnected with their mother.

On the other hand I feel sometimes like I will be the last one standing. So many of my generation were lost to the war, the drugs, aids, and alternative lifestyles that went south for them. It also doesn't help that I hung with people much older than I except for the above friend.

I never attended a high school reunion. However I have connected with people from those days. We were the odd kids, the outcasts, the artists, the musicians and the weird hippy and biker kids that survived. May of us grew up and are quite conservative today. Others cling to the old days but we all get alone. Many of us had little to do with each other back in school days. It is our generation that binds us today but new friendships have been formed also. In a few weeks we are meeting up at one of the guy's homes for a bbq to celebrate being around one more year.

I guess I may as well add this. Wasn't sure but here goes. when I was 18 I met a guy I fell hard for only as an 18 year old can. We were living together and his job entailed some travel. One night there was a knock on the door. In a panic he grabbed as suitcase and started packing. My things. We drove like the "Streets of San Francisco" to the greyhound bus stop where he bought me a ticket and put me on the bus. The he screeched away. Later I heard from a mutual friend he left to go back to his home state across the country but would be back. He had left personal belongings behind. I waited and later searched. It changed the whole direction of my life and I put myself in some seriously dangerous situations because I was so stubborn. The mutual friend vanished also. Over the years I would occasionally wonder. I searched death notices and social security records. Nothing. When the internet came along I would occasionally do a search. Nothing. Then one day a few years back it popped up. A death notice. He died within 3 months of leaving the state. No details. No obit. One or two lines. He was killed in Miami. They called it a vehicle accident. No details no news articles about the accident. I really don't believe that. I will never know what side of the law he was on. There is no one to tell and no one to ask. That's my depressing story to add to the mix.

That's a normal occurrence as one ages into their senior years. Over half of my high school mates are gone; Many of my work acquaintances have expired. That is the norm when people of my age bracket passes 77 yrs old. It is sad and its is depressing if you dwell on it too much, but understanding that its the norm helps a few to deal with it. Be thankful If you still have reasonable health and mobility - many do not. Make the best use of your remaining years.

I haven't found anyone that I've looked up to be deceased. I am only 56. I belong to my high school facebook page, there have not been a whole lot of deaths really. Mostly, the people that it's announced that have died, I did not know and weren't from my class. What's really weird is the opposite was true for me...there were two people in my class, while I was in school that I had believe to have died. Wellllll, they are not dead at all, they are alive and well. I was actually shocked to find out that these two were not dead because for all those years, I just knew, they were dead...HAHA! I think they must have just moved away, they made an announcement on the morning loud speaker that we lost a student and I believed that they meant they had died...and so did a lot of other people. I clearly remember them being mourned in school. Bizarre!

I only know a couple, close to me, people that have died. My friend's EX died of cancer at 50. She found out she had lung cancer and fought it for a year, I think she was actually just shy of her 50th birthday. Then I have a cousin that became addicted to pain killers after she have a terrible accident on the job. This was in the 90s and she just died a couple years ago...she died from an accidental drug overdose. She had a long hard battle with tons of surgeries, but nothing helped the pain.

I've looked up a few work mates from many years ago, they are all OK. One girl that was pretty close to, I could not find her at all. She had a very common name though, maybe she's not on facebook. Even my old bosses are alive an well. I see some of my old teachers from high school are still going strong...too mean to die I guess...HAHA!

I do this a fair amount, to be honest. I have found quite a few who have passed away, of all ages. I had a friend way back when we were both new moms, who had a pretty sickly child. It was more allergies as I recall but it was pretty severe. I just saw that he died in his early 20's. Of course it could be anything but now I am thinking that the allergies were probably more like an auto immune issue.

I have also seen some happy and wonderful things but of course, ti's the deaths that really hit us because it's just final.

The early deaths are also memorable. One classmate died as a passenger in an auto accident on the expressway while we were seniors in HS. The driver was another classmate. He was barely injured. Another passenger survived, but was still in a 'halo' brace at graduation. None of these were 'wild boys'. They were just foolhardy for a moment.

I continued to volunteer at our hospital as a newlywed. One day I noticed a classmate's name on the admissions list. I stopped her room, but it went downhill after, "Hello." She recognized me and sat up in bed to scream at me, cursing me for having a life, a husband, a future. She was dying of leukemia.

A while back, I was looking through photos and found one taken of me on a trip to Mexico. I had traveled to Guadalajara by train from the AZ border with a friend from grad school during a break between semesters; neither of us could afford to fly home, and this was a cheap adventure. We lost touch somewhere in the late 80's with our various moves. I got curious and googled her, only to come across her obituary. She had died of some form of cancer, then in her mid-50s. I didn't expect that.

I've never kept up with old friends much, never went to high school reunions, but once, several years ago, when was about 79, I looked up a friend I had gone to school with from first grade, lost track of her in 10th when we both moved, found her again in time for her to be in my wedding, then lost track again till I final found her living in a neighboring state. So now we're both 83 and have been emailing each other every day or two. Yes, I have looked up old boyfriends and others, but this renewed friendship has meant so much to me.

Just curious....I haven’t ever looked up anyone except a couple of classmates from the past when helping with a class reunion several years ago. What search methods do you all use?

It seemed like the only ways to get anywhere productively was to purchase some search function. Otherwise there were just ‘white pages’ like an old phone book or a few open records of similar names that weren’t very useful.

I'm not nosy enough to pay for any of those sites that go into depth. And I don't have a Facebook account (I refuse.) So my search results are anywhere from none to very little. But when I search I just plug in the full name, town that I knew them from and anything else extra I can think of such as another close family first name or something specific to that person. I don't always come up with anything but sometimes I do. And I've only done this a few times. The ones who are really full of themselves and their social standing make it easy by listing themselves on sites like Linkedin, etc.

"The ones who are really full of themselves and their social standing make it easy by listing themselves on sites like Linkedin, etc."

Linkedin is only a business/professional job networking website. I don't know how one can make the assumption that those who are members are "full of themselves and their social standing".........

I look people up because I'm a voyeur at heart. :) The most recent one was the lady we bought this house from in 1991. I knew she remarried and moved away, but she was well known here and people often asked me if I had heard from her and/or how was she doing? What I found was her obituary in the Longview newspaper. She was younger than I. Sad, but now I have a reply when someone asks about her. I was a bit surprised when I looked up my kids' addresses (because I never remember them) and found among "known relatives" their former spouses and stepchildren. That info is over 20 years old, and I expected the site to be more up-to-date.

I guess I am a voyeur at heart as well, though I just call it an inquisitive mind, because I look up all kinds of things on the internet. What I find creepy is how much bad stuff you can learn about people. I worked with a group of men in the late 1970s early 1980s before the term sexual harassment meant anything, at least where I was working. I found out some of them were sued years later by women, and the legal filings are now public and on the internet. Wo!

I haven't made any effort to keep up with anyone from high school. I don't do Facebook, but my older brother does and his circle of friends in high school overlapped with mine. A couple of years ago he told me that, Matt, my best friend though many years of elementary school and high school had abruptly passed away. I also recall that he told me of another mutual friend from high school who had announced that he was diagnosed with colon cancer, I don't recall hearing any more about him.

A third person lived two houses up the street from us from even before we started school, and during the trip to Cincinnati when my father was ill, my brother arranged for us to meet up with that person who coincidentally lived in the very house we used to live in. We visited briefly with her and her mother (who still lived in the same house, two houses away), and her brother. It was interesting to see our old house, and I was surprised how little it had changed. After that I made no effort to maintain any contact with her, but did hear an odd story through my sister about the brother passing away, and our friend having trouble notifying her mother about the death because her mother had filed some sort of restraining order against her.

Put me in the nosy club. I love to look up old acquaintances and my parents old friends and so on. I am also temporarily (I hope) handicapped so I have too much time on my hands.