Nah, it was a complete dump job. This was a community hospital and the patient was one of the attending’s private pay patients. NOT the sort of thing you just walk away from to let a 2nd year resident deal with. Not if you want to maintain your rep among your most valued patient base.
I had to tell my grandpa that his sister had passed. I was around 13 years old at the time. A few years later, I had to tell him that his brother had passed.
I had to tell my mother that my grandpa (The same grandpa from above, her father) had passed.
More recently, I had to tell my husband that his grandmother had passed. Then, last year, I had to tell him, over the phone, that his youngest brother had passed unexpectedly.
I truly hope I never have to break that sort of news to anyone, ever again.
This, except that it was my sister, not my brother who committed suicide. Overseas. While my mom was on the road with my stepdad, and I had to call all over creation to even find them.
And then I got to tell my brother.
So he was a coward. :mad:
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Telling my (then 10 year old) son his father was dead.
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My cousin was 10 when his Dad (my uncle) died, and my grandparents had to tell him. He kept saying, ''You guys are just playing a mean trick on me, aren’t you???"
Ugh. This thread is sad.
Telling PandaKid that my mother had been found dead in her bed. Poor baby was only 10 at the time and she loved her granny so much 
Unfortunately delivering bad news is part of the job.
I have had to call family members when my mom was put on heart hospice, she is in the stage of heart disease, if she is found complaining of chest pain we are to call the nurse and she will make comfortable when she dies. I’ve also had to tell my family that I had breast cancer.
The hardest was telling my daughter that her grandma died (my mom). I didn’t have to say the words. I went to my daughter’s house, early morning, not a usual time to visit. All I said was “Uncle Denny called.” I guess the look on my face was enough.
A few months later I had to tell her that Uncle Denny died.
My oldest sister was estranged from our parents at her therapist’s insistence.
They tried for 2 years, but she would never speak to them.
I had to call her to tell her our Dad had died. THEN she was upset.:rolleyes:
Then I called my other sister. Not a good day.
My uncle was on a ventilator after having pneumonia and complications from pulmonary fibrosis. After the doctors made their rounds, I spoke with them and asked them how we needed to proceed. After that conversation, I had to tell my mother and my aunt that they needed to prepare themselves for taking their brother (my mother) and husband of forty years (my aunt) off the machines in twenty-four hours. I will never forget the looks on either of their faces.
My grandmother was the last of her sisters do die. Her Alzheimer’s was pretty advanced when we (Grandpa, Dad, Mom, & I) took her too her sister’s funeral. Grandma asked “Who’s in that box?”, then when we told her she’s start crying because her sister was dead. 
Then she’d ask “Who’s in that box?”; the same cycle over and over again. Heart-breaking doesn’t even begin to describe it. Then on the way home she kept asking if we could stop for ice cream. And not for some levity; it turned out my grandmother’s sister was my ex-boyfriend’s grandmother (ie I dated by 2nd cousin without either of us realizing it :o).
I had to tell a friend that a dear, close friend of hers had just jumped off the roof of a parking garage, and no, he wasn’t alive.
It’s odd. When I was maybe, I dunno, 15? I had to tell my mom to tell my dad that his brother died. But to me it wasn’t a big deal, because TW to me was, you know, old. But Mom called him in and had him sit down and he cried and then it was really weird for me. He hung onto me and said “My brother is gone!” And now as an adult I realize that even though TW was, indeed, in not great health, it was unexpected and it was the first of his seven siblings to go.
ETA - shit, I totally forgot about that awful day when my sister in law died and my mom called me to be on hand because we were all going to the school to tell my niece and then to the middle school for my nephews. But I was in the car. Only I waited, like, an hour, and nothing happened, and I got concerned and went in there just to get folded in because my niece wasn’t where she had supposed to have been so they couldn’t find her. (Because it was her sixteenth birthday.) So I was there when they told her. Holy shit was that a shitty day.
You don’t want to know. And seriously folks, why would anyone want to share something like that online?
When my mom died, I had to make the phone calls to let everyone know. I have a small family though, so it was just her (former) brother-in-law, a few friends, and my dad. My parents hadn’t spoken for about 20 years, and mom had asked me not to tell dad that she was sick, so for him it was unexpected.
Well, my son died in April, and my husband and only other child were working out of town ( construction) and it was a sudden unexpected death. I had just talked to him and he was fine, then he went to his son’s mother - ex gf’s home- and died and we still don’t know why. It’s been 3 months and no autopsy report yet.
But I had to tell my sister, because telling my husband was so beyond me… I couldn’t bring myself to tell him his son had died. It just hurt too much. It was hard when he arrived because the hospital had to move him to a cooler behind the funeral home to await transport to the state medical examiner’s office.
It was also hard to tell my grandson… he already had been told, but he didn’t believe it. He asked a lot of questions. He is still asking questions. It literally is the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with thus far in life, but I did learn that just when I think life can’t throw anymore at me any worse , I found out that day that yea, life can still keep throwing bad shit at you…
My father had exploratory surgery. I was the person who told him what they found- inoperable, widespread, late-stage cancer, months to live. He was 67, I was 42.
Hard as it was, I wanted to be the one to tell him. Nobody else in the immediate family was capable, mother and sisters being crazy-hysterical with grief, and I sure as hell didn’t want his cool, detatched surgeon giving him the news.
Nine weeks later I was also the only one at his bedside for the final several hours, holding his hand as he died. (Mother and sisters still “not up to it.”)
I consider my part in both events to have been a privilege. 20 years ago. Gotta go, something in my eye.
One of my college housemates took his own life. I was the last person to see him, and I was the one who discovered the body. When I called 911, I was so shaken that I couldn’t remember our address or anything else. Then I had to call his parents and his fiancée. He hadn’t left a note, and there was absolutely no problem that anyone knew about. So his parents and fiancée were understandably devastated. It took me a long time to get over this.
When I had to call my folks and tell them that my daughter had died. My dad had never even seen her (he was planning to fly out the next week) Was one of the hardest things I ever had to do and at the time I was barely holding together.
When I was 19 - home from college for the summer - I had to tell my parents that I had stolen money from the cash register of my employer (and was being “asked to quit” for it). I was very, very nearly suicidal about having to tell them this; I came home from work around noon and waited until my mom came home at 5:30 to tell her, and in the intervening hours, I had some very dark, desperate thoughts. I wasn’t sure what my employer was going to do about it, which was why I enlisted my parents. With my confession to my employer, I could conceivably have been prosecuted - but my parents spoke to them and convinced them that I was thoroughly regretful, and they also paid back what I had stolen. Between that and my full cooperation with my employer, I was allowed to quit and they didn’t pursue it any further.
My confessed motive was that I had stolen to help facilitate paying them (my parents) back for a couple of loans (first to buy a nice bicycle, then a stereo system), but the reality was that I was trying to secretly pay for a traffic ticket I had gotten while driving one of my parents’ cars. It got worse: this was my second violation in a relatively short time frame, and I hadn’t told my parents about the first one, either. The two tickets together meant my insurance (which they were paying) was going to jump up, which meant I had to tell them about BOTH tickets.
That was an unbelievably shitty summer, having to confess to my parents that as a young adult - someone who should know better - I had violated not one, but TWO behavioral standards that were very important to them - a deep respect for property rights, and the importance of operating a car with due caution and regard for the safety of others. They weren’t horribly angry, but they were visibly saddened and disappointed; I think that may have been worse.