Does this mean they would not see him at all, or that they would not make repeated visits?
Hell, even I drove four hours to see my estranged mother when she was dying.
It’ll be different for everyone.
I’ve had two aunts in nursing homes, one with bone cancer who wanted visitors and the other with congestive heart failure who didn’t want to see anyone. My first husband, in the weeks before he died, didn’t want to see anyone, not even his siblings. He said more than once, “I don’t want them to remember me like this.”
I’m a smoker so I’ve thought about this a little bit. It’ll be enough to know that people are thinking about me. I’ll be just as happy with a card, book, or balloon as with a personal visit. I know how much of a strain it is, having a friend or relation in bad shape, and if my friends aren’t up to visiting me, I’d like to think I’ll understand.
It just depends. If we know that someone wants to see us, we should overcome our discomfort and do it, and with some grace. It’s part of being a grown-up.
It was probably enormous. Just seeing and interacting with you, someone she loved and who loved her, was the comfort.
Also, how could she be expected to guess what effect visiting her would have on you in the future? This seems like self-justification to me, being able to tell yourself, “Well it would make me suffer and surely she wouldn’t want that, would she? Therefore, she wouldn’t want me to visit.”
No, she very much wants you to visit because she’s dying and feeling scared and very alone in the face of that and wants (needs, even) to see her loved ones one last time.
And yes, I would say it is selfish to deny someone this, even if it makes you suffer a little. They’re suffering more, even if they won’t be alive much longer to remember it.
I will say, I know extreme pain makes you not care about anything else, but I don’t know that someone could be in so much pain that they couldn’t get some comfort from the presence of their loved ones, or how you would even tell things were at that point. I imagine it would have to be a hell of a lot of pain for that to be the case. Better to be there just in case and not be needed than the opposite.
I don’t understand your logic. You couldn’t say more to him than goodbye so you’re better off saying less? Even some is better than nothing.
Also, I imagine your grandfather wouldn’t have given a toss about being honored and respected for his intelligence and accomplishments on his deathbed, he’d have just wanted to be able to see you one last time and be told he was loved and valued by you.
I might even be insulted, if I were him, and you made it about my intelligence/achievements. He knows all of that and it has little meaning when you’re about to die. What *does *have meaning is being able to see and interact with people you care about and be told that they care about you. IMHO, anyway. I’ve never been on my deathbed, obviously.
I think it’s a matter of magnitude. I wouldn’t think seeing a dying relative would be incredibly distressing to the point of causing trauma, baring extenuating circumstances like PTSD as mentioned earlier.
I think it depends on the dying person’s mental state. I lost my grandmother and grandfather a few years back. Both suffered from extreme dementia for the last few months. Towards the end they didn’t recognize their own children, much less their grandchildren. I declined to visit for that very reason. It was hard enough visiting with them when they were barely lucid for a few moments at a time; after they were totally gone I saw no reason to ensure my final memories were of them as drooling invalids. They were better people than that, proud, independent, and self reliant. They would want to have been remembered as they were.
I should have italicized “trauma”.
When my grandmother was diagnosed, she told me that she was going to turn into someone else and that she didn’t want me to have those memories of her. I stayed away and I don’t regret it.
It was a little of both and while I cited that particular situation, it happens a lot. One family member would not visit at all, even people in a nursing home with no immediate death expected. Others would visit only rarely.
Ironically, the ones who didn’t visit as often had more trouble with his death. My theory is that unresolved issues extends the grieving process.
Of course there are specific issues on the side of the person who is sick and the potential visitors and those cases don’t apply.
I try not to be too judgmental of people who are dealing with a very difficult time in their own way. But even if they don’t want to remember the sick person like that, they could show up to give a little relief and support to friends and relatives.
When my grandmother passed on, she was comatose for several years before she died. Our family is quite wealthy, and so they hired a private nurse to watch over her 24/7 in her own home, fixed up like a hospital.
What freaked me out about the whole situation was that her children essentially convinced each other that she was still “there”. They would visit, tell her the family news, hold one-sided conversations with her (but really at her), etc.
I, on the other hand, saw no signs whatsover that she was at all concious. Her body was alive, yes - kept so with feeding tubes and regular maintenace by the nurse - but there was no "person’ inside it; it was a withered husk from whence all conciousness had gone some time ago. As far as I could see, the essence of her - her conciousness - had died a long time ago, when a series of strokes basically destroyed her brain.
My attitude towards this caused some friction in the family, as I was expected to visit regularly for comforting my grandmother, whom in life I held dear. I did visit - occasionally - but purely for the sake of my relations, not her; I simply refused to buy into what I thought was a sort of wishful delusion on the part of my relations, that she was still “there” to be comforted. Sadly, mostly what I thought during these visits (though did not say) was ‘for god’s sake, turn off the machines and let her body go’ - though honestly, it didn’t much matter, as she was beyond feeling any pain - there was nothing to feel pain with.
How about, “Thank you.”
Since I don’t know much about him or your relationship with him, I can’t say what specifically you would have thanked him for, but you clearly admired him, and there would have been much to thank him for - for the times you spent together, for everything he meant to you.
Hearing that sort of thing from those who matter to you means a lot to most people, whether or not they’re on their deathbed.
The callous response, which you get because you posted this in the Pit:
The person who’s dying is very shortly about to have all of their feelings be moot. The person who is *not *dying will get to carry on those feelings and experiences for, presumably, *much *longer, until their own deaths. Weeks, months, years… probably decades.
Unless you’re his fucking grandmother back from the dead, you’re talking out your ass. She was gasping in horrible pain the whole time. For all you know, she just wanted him to get the fuck out of the room so she could really let go.
I have been hospitalized exactly once, for a PE. Conceivably, I could have died at any time, if a clot wandered into the wrong place. My mother insisted on being with me pretty much the whole time, short of going home to sleep for a few hours each night. All I wanted was for her to get the fuck out of there, but Mom being Mom, her need to “be there for me” (especially if something *did *go wrong) was more important that *my *need to have some privacy.
My thoughts exactly. If someone wants to come visit me, and I want them there, that’s one thing. But for them to visit me when *I *don’t want it, or for them to visit me when *they *don’t want it… I’d rather they just stayed away.
So you’re telling me that if your wife or child were gravely ill, you wouldn’t want to be with them because it might be too hard to watch? I don’t really believe that.
I too have been in the situation of watching someone die. I’ve seen it happen to people I loved dearly and I have also seen a number of strangers die in my work as a physician. Of course I know death can be ugly and that it’s hellish to see someone you love die. However, most people don’t want to die alone. No, you can’t take away the pain of the dying…but you may be able to make it a little less terrifying because they have a hand to hold or hear a comforting familiar voice at the end. If you love someone, I think even doing that little bit is worth the pain of witnessing their death.
Look, no one is obligated to visit.
What was the relationship like between your brother and the recaltrant relatives ?
The fact is that if either my wife and daughters were in that situation you bet your ass that my prime reason for living would be the comfort of my presence in their painful limited life.
That would apply to a somewhat lesser degree to only some of my 7 siblings and a very few nearby friends.
The next tier would involve those I’d wish I had a better relationship with but with some sense of obligation as a result of our mutual past.
All I’m saying here is that there is no reason to be judgemental.
Okay, as long as you’re being honest that you don’t care about the person who is dying.
My mother died a little over a year ago. Traumatic? Hell yes, it was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. But, I can’t imagine being anywhere else during that time.
Calling or emailing at least, and certainly making visits at home or hospice, is not the same as abandoning someone (which I have seen happen to terminally ill people - even if not imminently dying - because their friend/family “couldn’t deal with it”).
I also think it’s different if the dying person knows about your issues and doesn’t mind that you aren’t visiting (or the person truly doesn’t want visitors), versus a dying person who has made it known that he does want company (like tim-n-va’s brother).
Warning - some graphic content to follow
OK - when I was wiping my dying mother’s bloody, shitty ass and getting up all hours of the day and night to take my turn at moving her wasted body so she wouldn’t acquire bedsores and listen to her intermittent moans and cries on a baby monitor while I was trying to sleep and meanwhile trying to take care of my dad and clean the house and do the cooking and laundry so he could spend time with her as her husband rather than her nursemaid… during that time it would have been REALLY NICE for my one sister who stayed away almost all of that time (as opposed to my other sister who, being a doctor, handled the medical stuff much better than I did) to show up and at least pick up some groceries. But she couldn’t handle it mentally. She really couldn’t. And we all knew that. And forcing her to take care of mom would not have helped if she had puked all over mom in revulsion at her condition or had a nervous breakdown. What purpose would it serve? Some people really can’t handle some medical issues. It’s nothing to be proud of, but I, personally, don’t have an urge to rub her face in it.
On top of that - she was dealing with a severe problem with one of her sons, who was also hospitalized part of the time mom was in hospice. Maybe it was better that she expend her energy on her seriously ill child than her dying mother. I’m just glad as hell I wasn’t in her shoes having to make her choices. That thought kept me going some of those awful nights.
I try hard not to be judgemental in these situations. Are some people selfish assholes? Yep. Are some people genuinely ill-equipped to handle these situations? Yep. Personally, I hope to avoid being either.
I really don’t think the world is that black and white. Working in hospitals I’ve seen a lot of people who have full on phobic reactions to hospitals.
Also, death is something that is often not talked about so a lot of people don’t know what to say to someone who’s dying so they put it off and, unfortunately, time makes their decision for them and it’s too late to say anything. What seems easy for you to do isn’t always easy for others.
Some people do not want visitors when they’re in the hospital while some people do. Some people don’t want to see crying or have people feel sorry for them while others take comfort in their loved ones being near.
Not everyone has the emotional capability to live their lives with the expectations that you deem correct.
Well, that is the time to say goodbye, isn’t it? When my childrens’ grandmother was dying, I was lucky enough to go visit her one more time before she died. Standing at her bedside in the ICU I told her “I love you Ruby, if I don’t see you again on this side, I’ll see you on the other side”.
Even if you had said nothing, that would have been fine too, IMO.
Who said it was easy? On the contrary, I think the point the OP was trying to make was that it wasn’t easy for him to see his brother dying, yet he still was there for his brother.
I don’t think anyone here is talking about forcing visitors on people who don’t want them. Since tim-n-va mentioned that his brother was lonely, it doesn’t sound like the brother was asking people to stay away.
I thought it went without saying that we weren’t talking about forcing visitors on people who would rather die alone. I can’t say that I have met very many people who have expressed a wish to die alone though. Most people seem to find the idea of dying in the company of loved ones a little more comforting. Maybe someone should start an IMHO poll though!
And I don’t have the emotional capability to empathize with people who can’t get around to visiting their dying loved ones. I guess we all have our crosses to bear.