Maybe someday you’ll improve. Here’s to hoping!
I know it irked and saddened and angered my mother that everyone was seeing her in this weakened state. She forbade most of the family to tell me anyway. (They didn’t listen).
And she had a huge injunction against crying in front of her. She would actually get really angry and upset.
She didn’t want us all crowding around until the very end, and she made that VERY clear, primarily by moving far away from everyone, and not telling most people how close she was until my dad broke down and started calling everyone in tears.
Some people really don’t want people seeing them like that. I can see why. She was tough as nails and here she was, reduced to a frail old woman.
But I do recommend people go at least once to people they care about, if only to say goodbye. As for the rest? Maybe they don’t care about them. It’s possible, and you don’t necessarily know what their relationship was like.
When my grandmother was dying and her children were frantically trying to arrange plane tickets home to see her, one of her nieces said that they shouldn’t bother - we didn’t know how long it would be, she could still live for weeks, and they should wait until she died and just come for the funeral. I was baffled. Couldn’t she see that the whole point was to get there while she was still alive?
It was painful to see her suffer. But losing the last chance I had to see her would have been worse. My sister left the hospital in tears the first time she saw how much she’d declined, but went back to visit her again almost every day. We all did. None of us could imagine doing anything else.
I don’t get the “I want to remember her as the vibrant person she was, not like this” argument. I remember my grandmother taking me to the park, telling me stories about when she was young, walking the dog, decorating for Christmas, teaching me the breaststroke. I also remember feeding her spoonfuls of soup, sitting by her side while she drifted in and out of consciousness, holding her hand that was too weak to squeeze back, saying goodbye to her. The sad memories don’t erase or negate the good ones.
Actually, this is the kind of thing I need to hear. My mother and I were apart so long - we talked, or e-mailed, but rarely saw each other. And in truth, the bad memories of her are threatening to overtake the good ones, some anyway.
Grief, loss, and death are a different colour to everyone and I think it’s harsh to make judgments. People live with what they choose in the circumstance; and they make the best choice they can at the time.
This is pretty judgmental. We have varying degrees of tolerance for the end of life sicknesses. Because you are able to gut it out does not mean others can. it can be selfish but it can also be real reaction.
There’s caring about the dying person, and then there’s being realistic about your own ability to cope after their death. Sometimes people have to decide that not making the dying person’s last (weeks, days, hours) as much better as their presence could make it *is *worth not having to take on a lot of emotional stress and trauma that could fuck them up for decades.
Is that the decision *I *would make, personally? I doubt it. But I’m not going to jack my horse up 50 feet in the air so I can sneer down at people who have different strengths and weaknesses from me.
Some are addressing a different issue. If you know that you’ll have years of a emotional distress by visiting that doesn’t fit. If you are avoiding visiting on the outside chance that you might feel long term emotional distress than you are being a little selfish. Yes, that is judgemental but after all, this is the Pit.
If you know that someone doesn’t want visitors (and some people will say they don’t because they want to spare you and they really would benefit from a visit), that is a different case also.
Also, if you’ll have emotional stress or if you know they don’t want visitors, you won’t use the cop-out phrase “I don’t want to see him like that”. Throw out those few people on those extremes and I’ll stand by the original post.
I say… so what?
There are two people involved in the situation: the person who’s dying, who may feel worse if the person doesn’t visit than if they do; and the person who’s not dying, who may feel worse if they do visit than if they don’t. Why is it worse for the dying person to feel bad than the person who’s going to live?
Are they just being selfish dicks? Maybe. But are you living inside their heads, that you know what their actual reactions will be? How do you know that a visit from someone who really doesn’t want to be there is going to be helpful instead of more harmful than if they’d just stayed away?
For the same reason that it is considered poor form to kick someone who is already down. Do you also have trouble understanding why the Make a Wish foundation focuses on trying to give some happiness to kids who are dying? When someone is dying, they’re probably dealing with enough sadness and suffering. The last thing they need is for anyone around them to add to it, and ideally it’s nice if the people around them care enough to try to do something to make things a little less unpleasant.
Wow. The feelings of those who have died are moot? The feelings of those who are soon to die can therefore also be discounted? Shit, why care about anyone ever? It’s all moot, ultimately.
Do you expect to die alone in pain? You probably should.
Dying alone may not be that bad, compared to some of these descriptions. Considering what my mother told me about visiting her Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother, who would just stare directly at her but say nothing, do nothing, I’m thinking a death alone via an OD on pills or a bullet would be a mercy to those in my life. Now that I know that’s in my genetic heritage, it’s something I’ll have to consider for a few decades from now.
Damn straight. There’s no way I’m going down the Alzheimer’s path, although with it on both sides of the family that’s a highly likely diagnosis.
I just hope that by that stage there’s a convenient way to kill myself with minimal pain and without traumatising emergency responders.
Unless they’re fat, right?
Do us all a favor and finally shut the fuck up for once.
They’re not kicking them–they’re just neglecting to do something that might help them feel a bit better.
It doesn’t hurt anyone else when they make cool shit happen for dying kids.
And you don’t think having someone around you who doesn’t want to be there and can’t stand to see you is going to add to your suffering?
No shit. But if they don’t think they can do it, I sure as hell don’t want them to try. Because I’m not a selfish bitch.
Right. Go eat another pack of Oreos.