No Longer With Us

By Wendell Blue

Everybody has to die, but not all people go out in the same way. While many people seem to simply grow old and fade away, large numbers of people who have come into contact with the author have departed this world in unusual and interesting ways. Reflecting on his life, Mr. Blue concludes that he has come across an inordinate number of dying people. This short work describes some of the of the more surprising ways his friends, classmates, family members, and colleagues have journeyed into "the great unknown."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wendell Blue
• Release date: Oct 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463999844

Wendell Blue

Wendell Blue is a retired teacher of English as a Second Language. He taught for over 35 years at various schools and universities in the United States, Latin America, The Middle East and Asia. While serving in the Peace Corps as a young man, he realized that he enjoyed living abroad. As a result, he has lived nearly his entire adult life abroad, teaching English wherever people were willing to hire him.

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NO LONGER WITH US

By

Wendell Blue

Copyright 2019 by Wendell Blue

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Classmates Not with Us Any More

Chapter 2: Deaths in the Family

Chapter 3: Dropping Like Flies in Latin America

Chapter 4: Biting the Dust in the Desert

Chapter 5: At Peace in Asia

Chapter 6: Giving up the Ghost in Europe

Chapter 7: Near Misses and Final Thoughts

Introduction

As I sit here writing this, I am slightly over sixty-six and a half years old. That means I have survived over 24,272 days. When you consider all the ways a person could die at any time, it seems amazing that any human could survive so many days. There are bacteria and viruses which can kill us from the inside, and countless external threats. We don’t even have protective hard shells like many insects.

Some years ago, I was sitting with friends when we heard a report about flooding in Bangladesh. Scores of people had died, which isn’t unusual in a low-lying place like Bangladesh. Someone remarked on how Bangladeshis must begin to feel uneasy when it starts to rain. Never mind when it rains! They must start looking over their shoulders anytime somebody flushes the toilet! I exclaimed in my own precious insensitive way.

Insensitive or not, it is true that lots of people in Bangladesh die young and people there are constantly surrounded by death. Of course, the fact is that everybody on the planet is surrounded by death. This is just less apparent in some places.

I don’t know if my life story is typical, but it seems to me that throughout my life I have experienced more than my fair share of encounters with death. Luckily for me, so far it has been the death of other people. These people have not passed away easily. Rather, they have checked out in various unusual and surprising ways. I’ve even had a few near misses myself.

This book is an account of the ways my friends, classmates, relatives and colleagues have