Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank the Tank
Man, there are a few things. Having to go from work to the hospital every day on my lunch and after work to visit my cousin in the ICU. Then to get there one day after work to hear they were pulling the plug and having to say goodbye to her.
Towards the end of my grandfathers life, he was blind and suffering from dimentia. He was in a nursing home way out in the country, about an hours drive from London. I was working the 3 to midnight shift so every other day, I would get up early and go visit him. Sometimes he'd be asleep and I'd just sit with him and hold his hand. Sometimes he'd be awake but just whacked out and making no sense, and then, maybe three times, he had a couple of minutes where he was clear and lucid. On one of those three times he pulled me closer and gave me a huge hug and said "just kill me now". I'll never forget that.
Obviously I didn't do it, but it made me realize that at least a part of Grandpa understood that he was in a strange place, strapped into a wheelchair wearing a diaper and that he'd rather be dead.
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alright, that one really really got to me...dammit now i won't be able to sleep with that going through my head. i can't even imagine how tough that would be
the hardest thing i've ever had to do...well, to be honest, i haven't really had to do anything that hard. certainly nothing like most of you have gone through. however i may have to soon as one of my grandpa's is visibly starting to fail. it's been tough already. he used to be this huge guy, 6'3"ish, toughened up from working as an electrician and handyman around the hotels he and my grandma own, who managed to recover from an illness that saw him vomiting blood and airlifted to u of a hospital, to an aging man. every day you can see him get a little bit older, and it's gonna be really really tough when he finally does pass on...