Hardest Duty You've Had To Perform?

[TheyCallMeBruce]

I was a pall bearer for my former boss (who is also my friend's dad), and I saw that as a great honor. I never realized he thought highly of me, even after I had stopped working for his company for almost a decade ago.

Hardest was seeing my friend and brother laid to rest. Though he was much younger and not related to me, I had always regarded him as my younger brother. I guess it wasn't really a duty...but I had to sing at his funeral...that was tremendously hard.

[Flashpoint]

Sometimes CalgaryPuck makes me cry at work.

[burn_baby_burn]

When I was 17 I had to go console my friend who's 16 year old sister had just been killed an hour earlier by a drunk driver. We had grown up together and I was a good friend to his sister as well. They had lost their father to cancer a few years ealier. When I initially heard the news I instantly got in my truck and headed over to his house. Then I started to think about what I could possible say or do to console a person in a horrible situation like this? It was a tough thing to do. But I was glad I did it.

[Cowperson]

Shovelling rotten, moldering, liquified potatoes and carrots out of a root cellar while working as slave labour on my uncle's farm. . . . . the gag reflex was working overtime that day.

Picking rocks out of a field for days on end, by hand, is also not as much fun as it might sound at first.

And anytime you have to put a long-time pet to sleep is a difficult duty . . . horrible the first time but, while still sad, more pragmatic thereafter.

Cowperson

[Ford Prefect]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

Shovelling rotten, moldering, liquified potatoes and carrots out of a root cellar while working as slave labour on my uncle's farm. . . . . the gag reflex was working overtime that day.

Picking rocks out of a field for days on end, by hand, is also not as much fun as it might sound at first.

And anytime you have to put a long-time pet to sleep is a difficult duty . . . horrible the first time but, while still sad, more pragmatic thereafter.

Cowperson

I didn't mind picking rocks by hand as much as re-piling windrows of half burnt stumps and logs that had been cleared to make arable land. The soot and ash were horrible ... I used to feel like I'd spent the day working in Mordor. By comparison, rocks were at least clean and somewhat interesting, albeit brutal on the muscles.

[Buff]

Sit through interrogation by the companies loss prevention officer as he was trying his hardest to implicate me in a scheme that saw a fellow employee stealing from the store. The lpo was watching the employee and saw him offer me candy. I initially said yes, but then changed my mind. I didn't know that a piece of candy he pulled out of his pocket was stolen from the store's halloween section. Apparently the guy was stealing left right and center and they finally caught him with the candy.

He questioned me and told me I was lying and would question me again and again, all the while telling me that I was lying and going to jail for longer than the theif because I wasn't cooperating. He finally gave up on me and let me go because he had nothing on me and never could have anything on me. I was forced to apologize to the general manager for not noticing that an employee in a department on the other side of the store was stealing.

I should've quit but I didn't want them to think I was guilty. If I quit on the spot or didn't return to work it would have made them think that I had something to hide. I felt that I had to keep coming to work to prove to them about how wrong they were. Ever since then I have been unable to trust authority figures to properly do their job. I see a cop and I worry that he is going to make up something to charge me with... and since then I have twice been pulled over for not wearing my seatbelt even though I was.

[habernac]

Some unreal things here. We've been through a lot. I'll agree with a few others that being a pall bearer is a huge honour, one I've had for both of my grandfathers.

My toughest duty was to be the "strong one" earlier this year when my wife miscarried. I still don't know if I've dealt with it properly yet. This month has been difficult as he/she would have been born in the next few weeks. This has been by far the most difficult year of my life.

[Sample00]

Fireplug - I cant even begin to imagine what you must have gone through. How very sad. having something happen to one of my kids would just about do me in.

One of the most difficult duties I had to perform was saying a few words as President on behalf of our hockey association. One of our players died in a car accident on the way to a game. He was 13 years old and my kids played with him outside of hockey. I guess calling it a duty isnt appropriate. As Reggie said, it was an honour to speak at the service but damn it, if I didnt just about lose it 3/4 of the way through. Definately one of the hardest things I ever had to do. But again, it was an honour to do so.

[Ford Prefect]

Originally Posted by habernac

Some unreal things here. We've been through a lot. I'll agree with a few others that being a pall bearer is a huge honour, one I've had for both of my grandfathers.

My toughest duty was to be the "strong one" earlier this year when my wife miscarried. I still don't know if I've dealt with it properly yet. This month has been difficult as he/she would have been born in the next few weeks. This has been by far the most difficult year of my life.

Being a pallbearer is certainly an honour ... I've done it for two uncles and considered it a great honour. But being a pallbearer for a two-year-old niece and a 19-year-old friend, both of whom died under difficult circumstances, was very difficult. Still an honour for sure ... but a very difficult one.

I've had to do the "strong one" role for my wife as well when we lost twin boys during delivery, but for some reason that was different than being pallbearer in the two instances mentioned above. That's probably partly due to the circumstances involved in the death of my step niece and friend, and partly due to my being on auto pilot when we lost the twins. I knew I had to buck up in that situation and pull both of us through it. It wasn't until two years after their deaths that I allowed myself to confront my emotions, and by then the passage of time had already done a lot of healing.

[simmer2]

I feel pretty fortunate in my life when reading some of these incredibly sad stories. I think the toughest thing I ever had to do was to console my mom who didn't know if she had breast cancer or not. For the first time in my life, my mom was just a person who was scared and needed support.

Thankfully, she didn't have breast cancer but seeing vulnerability in your parents makes you realize they aren't superhuman and could die like any one of us. It made me appreciate them that much more.

[Resolute 14]

The entire events surrounding my aunt's murder. Front page news in both papers (with the Sun even using a blatant lie for a headline), viewing her body on Xmas day, funeral on boxing day, where I was a pall bearer. Police present (but distant) at that funeral. It was all rather surreal.

[OILFAN #81]

- Giving a speech at my ex's funeral after she was killed by a drunk driver.
- Giving a speech at a good friend's funeral I went to University with for 4 years after she passed away in a housefire.
- Waiting for the ambulance in my old living room (due to helping out one of my best friends after she had a suicide attempt. Was so scary at the time but I had to be the strong one to keep her alive, but I am thankful everyday that we got through it).

[Dion]

In the late 80's I lost a high school friend to suicide. He was suffering from schizophrenia. In the suicide note he said he couldn't deal with his mental illness and felt he could no longer beat it. He went downtown and jumped off a parkade. That one tore me apart on the inside

Lost another good friend due to a brain tumour in the mid 90's. Did the eulogy for that one.

A few years ago I lost a really good lady friend to a heart attack.

Growing up we had 2 dogs in the family. When they became too sick and had to be put down my late father handed the duties to me. He was too attached to the dogs and didn't have the heart to put them down. I'll never forget the looks in the dogs eyes as the vet was putting them to sleep. It was like they were telling me why are you doing this to me. Never owned a dog since then.

[Calgaryborn]

Giving my Grandmother's eulogy this spring is #1. I loved her dearly.

Number #2 was saying goodbye to my Uncle in the hospital while he lay dying from cancer.

[troutman]

I convinced the Chief Justice of British Columbia that my pedophile client should have supervised access to his children (a legal aid client I had to represent).

In another case, parents lost custody of their child forever (a shaken baby case).

Interviewing our axe murderer client in custody.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by troutman

I convinced the Chief Justice of British Columbia that my pedophile client should have supervised access to his children (a legal aid client I had to represent).

Next year I'm going to start the arduous journey to become a lawyer (still need to get into law school first) but this is one of the things that I don't know if I could handle doing. Maybe I'm more suited for prosecuting.

- Watching my mom get re-married when I was 7. My stepdad is a great person but it was still really hard on me.

- Seeing my dad trying to keep himself busy right after my grandma had died and then watching everything finally sink in and seeing him break down. My father and I have a very estranged relationship and it was very hard to put all that aside to console him.

- Consoling my friend and his family (who are basically my second family) after the loss of his 14 year-old sister.

[Azure]

Hugging the parents of my best friend after his funeral.

[Berger_4_]

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.

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...

[pope04]

I've accompanied several pets on their final journeys to the vet, I've been pallbearer for both at both of my beloved maternal grandparents' funerals and, like Dominic, I've "assisted" my wife while she gave birth to my three wonderful sons. All tough, but the hardest thing I've ever done was ask a question.

My dad was a rough-and-tumble sort, an alcoholic City of Calgary policeman. I've heard from his buddies on the Force that he was one hell of a cop, but he left something to be desired as a father and husband to my mother. My folks split up when I was in junior high, and, to make a long story short, he became estranged from his entire family as of, oh, 1989 or '90. All of us, my Mum, my brother and sister, my grandmother, cousins, missed him, cared for him and loved him, but he elected to go the hermit route. We knew he was somewhere in the Okanagan, but he didn't even have a phone so we couldn't connect with him in any way, shape or form. One day, actually October 23rd, 2002, one of his drinking buddies in Okanagan Falls, gave me a call to say my father was in the hospital in Penticton. I called the hospital and they told me that he had been transferred to the adjoining hospice. Hospice? That sounded pretty serious.

I called the hospice and the nurse I spoke to couldn't contain her disgust for me. For all she knew I was a dick of a son that neglected his cancer-ridden, terminal father. I explained some of the family dynamics to her and she calmed down. So here comes the toughest thing I ever had to do: I asked the nurse if she'd ask my father if it was okay if I came to see him before........you know. She told me to call back in 10 minutes while she asked him.

Well, let's just say those ten minutes didn't go very well. I haven't cried often as an adult, but for that short while I was a mess. Tears and snot flowed freely, and I was a dick to my wife. She told me she understood what I was feeling, and I blew up at her, blustering that she couldn't possibly understand because I didn't understand myself.

I called the hospice back, and the nurse herself was practically in tears. She told me it was okay to come so, the next day, my mother, two siblings and I flew to Kelowna and then rented a car to Penticton. I remember standing outside of Dad's room at the hospice, just a bundle of nerves, not knowing what the hell to say when I got in there. Finally, I just walked in and, when I got to his bed, he turned to me and I blurted, "Dad, we left this too long."

He agreed, and the rest of the visit went as well as could be expected. He gave me the ring he earned when he retired from the Force, then he challenged me to an arm wrestle. We all said our goodbyes, and I told him that I loved him for the first time in my life.

He died just a few days later.

[Jayems]

Probably having to watch a man who murdered a child sit and eat meat-loaf, fart and laugh while watching bill and ted excellent adventure and not rip his f'in head off.