Hardest Duty You've Had To Perform?

[Ford Prefect]

This is just another time waster thread to help pass the time until the season starts ....

What's the most difficult duty you've had to fulfill in your life?

For me it was being a pall bearer ... once for a two-year-old step niece and once for a good friend who was killed at 19.

[redforever]

Putting my Jessie to sleep. She was my little shadow and then she got old and was gone((

[JiriHrdina]

Had to fire a good friend. That really sucked.

[Caged Great]

Putting Pants on. Kills me every time I have to....

[Juventus3]

I got free tickets to a leafs game...box seats. My gf would only take me if i cheered when the leafs scored a goal.

Lucky for me they were playing Buffalo and the Sabres won 6-1. And she never said anything about NOT cheering when Buffalo scored.


Sorry maybe this is supposed to be a serious thread....
I had to (well, I was asked to and honored to do it) sing a song at a funeral once with my guitar. Easily the hardest thing I've ever set out to accomplish.

[FireFly]

I wrote a poem and read it aloud at my sister's funeral. The 17th of September will be the 10 year anniversary of her death. She was 22 and I was 16 at the time.

[Kjesse]

nm

[Eastern Girl]

After my Great Aunt lost her battle with cancer, I had the difficult task of cleaning out her apartment. It was a terrible feeling, essentially just putting her life into boxes. But it saved my mom the pain of having to do it, she was way too emotional to do it.

[V]

I had to pretend to be useful while my wife was in labour.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Pallbearing is an honor. I've done it four times. Try and look at it that way. It's sad, but it's something you're motivated to do when tragedy happens. Eulogy, though, would have been tough. Haven't done that. Still though, it's an honor, as heart-grippingly wrenching as it may be.

Toughest thing that was a duty? Tough call. You always hope your decision is for the best. Putting a pet down is for the best.

Toughestest thing would have to be something internal I'd think. Doing something wrong and admitting guilt, I'd guess there'd have to be degrees of wrongness attached in that case. Admitting it yourself and dispensing with self-preserving rationale?

But hey, what do I know. I guess honor can be a duty, and folks have the right to say their piece.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Originally Posted by V

I had to pretend to be useful while my wife was in labour.

That's a good one. Didn't think about that.

[MolsonInBothHands]

I had to tell my wife's parents that their son had just commited suicide.
Putting a long time pet to sleep also ranks up there.

[Dion]

I was a ballbearer for my fathers funeral. One of the persons picked had to drop out due to an illness and the rest of the family picked me. Loading my fathers coffin into the hearse was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I placed my hand on the coffin and said a final farewell before the hearse drove away.

[J pold]

This weekend calling my friend Josh (jroc) to tell him his best friend had just died

[jroc]

Originally Posted by J pold

This weekend calling my friend Josh (jroc) to tell him his best friend had just died

For me... trying to talk to cody (J pold) for about 2 minutes just trying to figure out what we were gonna do (which there was nothing to do about) hanging up the phone... balling my face off for 5 minutes straight while being consoled by my parents... then having to go downstairs in my house and tell 6 of our other closest friends about the tradgedy that ha just occurred.... by far the hardest moment of my life...

[the crispy badger]

Having to leave all our possessions behind in Ont when we got in a bad van accident in the middle of a move to NB..luckily we still had our lives although it was a close call

[firebug]

I can win this one...

My wife and I lost a baby at 39weeks and 6days last year (8/22/06)*. Difficult duties included:
Holding wifes hand as the nurse in the women's diagnostic center failed to find a heartbeat with the doppler ultrasound;
Consoling spouse as the imaging ultrasound confirmed the baby was lost, while asking semi-intellingent questions to the radiologist;
Contacting my in-laws and my parents by telephone who were anxiously awaiting good news from the hospital (easily the toughest phone call you will ever make to your mother-in-law);
Coaching my wife through the labour and delivery of a full-term baby that we knew we could never take home;
I won't get into the minutia of choosing caskets and grave plots, however being a pall-bearer of your own child is a difficult duty as well.

Other difficult duties:
Eulogizing (and being a pall bearer for) both my maternal grandparents as well as a murdered 18-year old niece.

Performing CPR in an unsuccessful attempt to revive a family friend who had a heart attack in our bathroom.

While volunteering in a regional trauma center in Iowa during harvest season I had to perform many duties to which those who might be squeamish would consider difficult.

Best regards,

~bug

*note to those who may be concerned: An experience like this has shown me how resilient the human psyche can truly be. While it was certainly a challenging experience, the small amount time my wife and I got to spend with Evie ranks as the most wonderful of our lives.

We are also now expecting again in the early part of January.

[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.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Putting down our puppy two days ago is my toughest moment...as sad as that is it pales to some experiences I am reading about

Reading this thread is a tough way to start a day

[BlackArcher101]

nm, mistook the topic on hand