I recently lost one of my great friends in an accident. He was riding down a hill on a skateboard with some neighbors and his 5 year old watching. He fell backwards and landed on the back of his head. It caused bleeding in three spots in his brain. He had a stroke from the injuries in the hospital and died from his injuries 7 days after the accident. He left behind his wife and a 5 and 2 year old. I have been having a harder time with this than I expected because:

1) His kids were so close in age to mine. The 5 year old is 7 days older than my older one. The 2 year old is about 2 weeks younger than my younger one.

2) I lost my mother when I was 8 which makes it harder to see his kids lose their father when they are so young. As mentioned on one of the other threads, it is terrible that his 2 year old will never have any memories of him.

3) He and I had a lot in common on a personality level. My wife said once that both of us reminded her of animals in cages because of our ridiculous amount of nervous energy. We also had several talks about how we struggled at times to be the husbands/parents we feel we should be.

My condolences on your loss.

It's always very difficult to lose a friend regardless of the circumstances. A friend of mine who died almost two years ago was a couple of years younger than me. He would have been 40 this year. I miss the guy as well.