Don't Ever Forget to say I Love You

“You metro Detroit folks might know that I-275 was closed for a good part of the day today due to a fatal accident. The 23 year old man who was killed worked at my company. I heard his name on the radio tonight, and then they mentioned he was a civil engineer at a Livonia based company. It took a second to sink in, but I realized it was the Dan I knew at work. I don't know all the details, but they think someone changed lanes too quickly, and a tanker truck rolled onto Dan's car. He was airlifted to U of M hospital, and his folks who live near West Branch were able to see him before he passed away.

Though I'm not working full-time anymore, I'll be going in tomorrow to be with everyone. I talked to a couple people, and they said it was a pretty rough day in the office. They found out he died around noon time. The accident was early this morning, he was on his way to a job site.

I have been so blessed that my fiance and I have been safe in our travels over the last two years, and I pray that we remain safe. I'm so guilty of driving like a jackass, and today's events have really brought that to light for me. Please, don't drive like a jackass.

Also, don't ever forget to say I love you to those you love. I say it to my fiance in every e-mail and phone conversation we have, so if something happened to me, he will always know I love him.

Rest in peace, Dan.”

“my wife is from Wyandotte. I've driven on I275. the speeds they reach with the amount of traffic is amazing. I am sorry for your loss. A very nice tribute, it says alot for the man he must have been. God Bless”

“wow...sorry to hear that :( mike and I tell each other I love you everytime one of us leaves, every phone call, everynight before sleep...and lots in between.”

“I say to Synchro and Ford every morning and night how much I love them.
Life is very precious :-(”

“sg - Sad about Dan. Similar thing happened here to a young mother a few years ago. Good advice about letting your loved ones know you love them. We do a lot of that in our family...but could do lots more.”

“Suddenly I'm remembering a co-worker who died suddenly. Monday he was with us in the break room having coffee and a smoke, Tuesday he didn't come to work, Wednesday we found out he had a cerebral hemorrhage, Friday most of us went to his funeral. It was a very sad week for us, he was well-liked and very missed. He was one of those guys who was like the glue that held the place together behind the scenes.”

“You never know when it's someone's time to go, so always say I love you. My step father in law died prematurely at 59. He just dropped on the street one day and that was it, right there. His daughter wasn't talking to him at the time, and the other daughter was barely talking to him, so now they have a big cross to bear. He was a great guy! I'm sure their tears at his funeral were 50% from guilt.

Three 28 year old ladies were driving in a car and had a piece of granite the size of their car land on it and squash them in WA a few days ago.

A man was in his boat with his dogs a few days ago who were in the water, but I believe had vests on and his 3 year old had a vest on, but for some reason, they think the man went to retrieve the dogs which made it to safety, but he was not found and the little boy was just adrift in this boat until some guys in a boat came by and questioned him and found he was alone and called 911. All they found were the guys sneakers.

About a month ago, a guy steps into the river to get his son's sneaker and gets pulled into the current and never makes it out.

Yeah, say I love you. Don't depend on someone returning home once they leave for a second chance at saying how you feel.
last edited: 9/13/05 11:15:35 PM”

“I have never told a co-worker, "I love you."”

“Let me be the first to say I love you, bacpac”

“I have, bacpac :D”

“Come to think of it ....so have I.


Years ago I dated at least three (if not more) co-workers.


In fact, I married one them.”

“Most people don't realize the seriousness of driving safely (said BowlderMan, traffic engineer). A guy I used to work with pointed out that if somebody walked into the middle of an intersection and started randomly shooting a gun all over the place, he'd be tackled and thrown into jail in a heartbeat. Yet the way some people drive is more dangerous than that, and nobody seems to care or even notice.”

“Smiley, I'm so sorry to hear about that--We drove on I-275 around 7 or 8 p.m. Heard about the accident-- that is so terrible. Apparently, they don't know what happened to the van that hit him... Why is it that the people who are doing the wrong thing never die? Why is it always the innocent person? How sad....


Lipstick-- the 3 girls that got hit by the rockslide-- One of them is PackLite's daughter....

I was working on planning my class reunion this summer and had found one of my classmates from Junior High / High School....

A month later, his wife called me--I saw the number on the Caller ID and thought "This is great! Someone RSVPing for our reunion." When I picked up the phone, she told me "I regret to inform you that Michael won't be attending, he passed away." I was completely caught off guard... He had died of a heart attack quite suddenly-- his poor wife was in Cheboygan Michigan (his home) and he was in Ontario Canada-- She didn't even get to see his remains, as it was too expensive for them to ship the body home... They had him cremated-- it took almost a month before they could do a memorial (which happened the day after our class reunion.) I stopped by to give his family my condolences... It was a very sad thing...

The ironic thing is that 20 minutes after I got off of the phone with Michael's wife, I got another phone call letting me know that one of our other classmates had passed away a few years back due to drug overdose.... Even though he was kind of a brat in high school, I still felt bad-- no one should have to die so young... it was a rough few days.”

“I know what you mean pink. I have been involved in planning the last two reunions for my high school class, and I keep a list on a web site I run for the class of everyone's name and contact info. I've received several emails about so-and-so that isn't around anymore so I can update the contact list. Kind of hits you when you open the yearbook and recognize the face.”

“The sad thing is that this was our 20 year reunion.

7 people (that we know of) have passed away.

We had a little over 400 people in our class... that's almost 1.5-2% of our class that's gone!

Out of the 7 who died,
3 died from car accidents (1 over a cliff, 1 hit a lamp post, 1 was running and hit by a guy with a suspended license--he only got 4 years on involuntary manslaughter).

1 died of a brain aneurysm at 19 yrs old
1 killed himself at about 23 or 24 yrs old.
1 died of a drug overdose at about 35 yrs old
1 died of a heart attach at 38 yrs old.

It makes you look at your life and realize that we could all go in an instant...”

“They found the other driver involved in the accident. A young woman from the same area. Someone had taken down a part of her license plate, and they tracked her down.

The funeral will be on Saturday. I'm not sure if I'll go to the funeral, since I really wasn't close with him. Apparently his dad was up north hunting, and they didn't reach him before he died. It was Dan's mom and aunt at the hospital. Two of my co-workers went to the hospital to be with the family. I went into the office today because I just needed to be with people who knew them. One guy was sobbing at work yesterday, he was a buddy of Dan's and they were going to go hunting this weekend. He was the one who assigned Dan the field work yesterday, when he got into the accident.



Pink, one of my high school classmaes (of 534) killed himself on the way home from Canada one night - he was drunk, and lost control of his car. I had known him since kindergarten, though I wasn't close to him either. It didn't suprise me he was drinking and driving, though. Still sad.”

“Over the past 8 years I've gone to many funerals (3 in 1997-- when my hubby's brother, grandmother and mother passed away in a period of 3 months--my grandmother had passed away 3 months before that, but she was overseas) and others which were for family friends who were older (and where death was more readily accepted. From the point of view of the family, if you can make it to a visitation or funeral to offer your condolences, it means a lot. The toughest thing at most of the funerals (when it's an open casket) is when they close the casket and you can't see your loved one any more. Obviously in a closed casket funeral, that doesn't happen, but then the hard part is when they put the casket into the ground to be buried...

I attended my classmate's funeral, even though I didn't really know him at all growing up--I still got pretty emotional at the funeral--when his mom read a childhood story from another classmate. It was strange to have talked and had a nice conversation with him only the month before... His wife was really appreciative-- and although I had mentioned our classmate's death via our reunion listserv, only 1 other classmate from childhood attended.

Smiley-- even if you can't go to the funeral, if you let the family know that you are thinking of them, I'm sure they will be very appreciative. If you can make it to the funeral or the visitation-- know that most families really are touched by the kindness of people they hardly know... I also understand the feelings of your co-worker who sent Dan to the field-- he must be going through immense feelings of guilt...
last edited: 9/14/05 2:07:43 PM”

“pink, I found out about it being Packlite's daughter. Thanks for telling me though. It was very sad for me to hear it on the news with them being young women.

When my step father-in-law died, his friend took hours to find his way up to the casket. It was just too hard for him. One friend could not go up at all.”

“Yes, it is much harder when it is a sudden death and unexpected...

I don't know if I could have gone up to the casket if my classmate was in one... that would have been too freaky--the last time I saw him was in high school. Apparently, he had gained a lot of weight (from the photos, it looked like he was about double the size, due to diabetes and other factors.) In a way I was relieved that he was cremated. IT was a surreal thing to me.

I hope I'm 90 when my close friends pass away. One of my other friends had a girlfriend watching her cat and dog while she was on vacation. On the last day of the vacation, her friend checked in on the pets, and then went home and died in her shower. My friend was absolutely a wreck when it happened... Her friend who passed away had been ill, but her death was a complete shock...”

“My mother-in-law was shocked by her new husband's sudden death. There were no indications he would die and an autopsy was never done, so no one even knows what happened.

She was out at the mall and her family had to get her out and back home. The mall is far from her; she lives in the country. She was going on a big vacation w/him to Hawaii to go on a cruise. The guy didn't like to take plane trips and they always did bus trips (tours), so this was going to be a big event.

It was sad too, because he really wanted to go to the Daytona bike rally in Florida and got there and was waiting to check in, so they stopped at an outside bathroom and a man went to his son waiting for him in the truck with their motorcyles being towed behind them and said your friend just fell down and that was it. He never regained consciousness or got up again. He was a great man. He put off going to the rally last year w/his son because his wife, my husband's mom, had colon polyps. She was treated and is okay, but he lost his chance to attend the rally!”