Waiting for "the phone call"...Follow

1-900-boringpost

I'm sorry for your impending loss, Nexa. Our family went through that for a month when my grandfather passed away, and for nearly a week when my stepfather died. You have my sympathies.

I opted out of what turned out to be the "one last visit" to my grandfather last year. Mostly because of the cost of flying to Colorado, but also, while I knew he was quite sick, I wasn't acutely aware that he only had a couple months left.

But probably, subconsciously, I didn't want to see him in that state. A selfish reason of course, but he was such a vibrant guy throughout most of his elderly years (which were all I knew him during, naturally) and towards the end, with the medication and nodding off mid-conversation, he was mentally a shell of what he had been just 5 years prior - I didn't want to remember him like that.

But then you just have to remember that sliver of a fraction of life at the end that you weren't there for, or could offer no comfort during, is just that - a mere sliver.

Sorry to hear that Nexa. I've been there before and no matter how much you prepare for it, it still hits you in the gut.

Oddly enough talking here in the Asylum, I got that phone call about my grandfather about 5 minutes after Joph and his munchkin left, after we had dinner at the hotel I was staying in for my grandfathers funeral (Both my grandfathers died within a week of each other so it was a double whammy). I specifically remember walking them out to the car when my phone rang. It was my mom and I asked her if I could call back in a minute as I wanted to see them off. After they left, I knew what the phone call was going to be, so stopped at the gas station nearby to get a full pack of cigarettes, started walking towards the hotel bar knowing I would be drunk soon, and called my mom to officially hear the news. I'm not ashamed to admit I bawled like a baby over many glasses of red wine that night. He was my favorite grandparent.

Sending hugs to you hon.

I remember going through something similar when my Gran had breast cancer when I was young . We were all told it was, sadly, something that would get worse in time and eventually kill her, and at some point I stopped thinking that I wanted her to get better, because I accepted it was not going to happen, and that I'd rather she died quickly .

Yeas, I have wished it could be over with - not just in that situation, but in many since - because I'd rather she was at peace than in pain . The same with the ex that keeps trying to kill himself . It sound cruel, but every try, I hope he succeeds because he plainly can't cope with life, I plainly can't help, and he'd clearly be happier that way .

I don't think it says anything bad about you that you think that way . Only you can know how much your gran is suffering, and if it would be easier for her another way .

I'm more or less in the same situation with my grandfather. He's um...90ish, and in the late stages of Alzheimers. It's not pretty. I hadn't seen him for the better part of a decade and now that it's getting close to the end my Father flies everyone out to see him periodically. He doesn't really know who I am anymore. It's a sad state of affairs. He was one of the Tuskegee Airmen. There's a signed portrait of him in the "Air and Space" museum in DC. Massive hard ***. One of the few people I found intimidating as a kid and now... Well, the whole situation is just unpleasant.

Will you do it like a singing telegram?

Very very very much so. That wait is horrendous...no matter how short or long the wait is.

Sorry to hear this Nexa

Its not fun waiting and despite preparation it still hurts just as much as if its a sudden death. For myself the only advantage of a slower death for one Grandmother was having the time and opportunity to say goodbye properly. To say all I wished to say, to spend lazy afternoons sipping wine on the veranda and simply listen and hold hands and enjoy each others company.

And to your question? Yes, at one stage I wished it would be over with but that was only when she spent the last week or so in hospital with no quality of life whatsoever and barely concious.

Its focused my mind on my mother. I'm much more careful about spending time with her. For most of us, is it only when Grandparents die that we truly appreciate what death is?

Good luck Nexa, how relieving to hear it was a peaceful passing. Your family will be in my thoughts today.

The same thing happened with my great aunt a few months ago. I, however, went to her hospital bed. She may or may not have been conscious. She would grab onto your hand and move it some, but I didn't see any life in her eyes. She was retrained and had a breathing and nutrient tube in her throat, which the doctor finally persuaded my father to replace with a direct trachea and esophagus tube for "comfort"

I don't honestly believe that I offered any comfort at all in that situation, because I don't really believe that she was cognizant.

My mother went there every day for a week, and my father read wtfever the passage is with lord is my shepard over the aunt before she died. I personally think it was ******* pointless, and I sort of wish I hadn't gone, because if the person isn't conscious then the only one you are comforting by going to the bed is yourself.

I try, rather, to remember last thanksgiving; she wasn't vibrant and she was kind of senile, but she was loving.

That's sort of where I've been at for a while. I spent nearly every weekend of my childhood at my grandmother's house, along with my sister and two of my cousins. We went over after school on Fridays and didn't go home until Sunday night, nearly every week. My grandmother played with us all weekend, helping us write family "newspapers", taking over the dining room with absurdly huge domino designs that would take 8 hours to make, playing with barbies or legos or changing the living room into a pirate ship with furniture or appliance boxes she'd pick up from work. We went berry picking in the summer and made enormous snow forts in the winter. My grandmother is the one who purchased nearly all my school clothing. Even in my teenage years, I'd go stay at her house about once a month so that we could stay up until 4am watching Elvira host B-grade horror movies on USA UP All Night, haha. I think I'm relatively certain that I've watched every bad horror movie about radio active animals with her. However, after my grandfather died, she became increasingly bitter and angry and it got worse after my father passed and senility set in. She was never happy anymore and would accuse us of never calling or visiting even if we'd just been there. I hadn't seen her since before Christmas because she wouldn't let me visit and maybe that's for the best...I'd rather remember her the way she was.

Nexa

Okay I didn't tell the whole story.

She was in the hospital for a week prior to contracting some weird *** disease.. pnumounia I think but they never figured it out.

But she was in there to begin with for a fall. She was entirely conscious for a week before contracting the sickness and my father didn't tell us.

I don't criticize my mother for going to talk to an unconscious person to comfort herself, but I was extremely pissed at my father for keeping us in the dark and then only going through the motions of visitations after he could have been going there with me, while she was awake.