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I just got a phone call. (Death in the family)
Lars
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My grandfather has passed away.
I have been very fortunate and am over thirty years old with this being my first really close death. Prior to this there had just been a few distant relatives or people from high school I hadn't seen in years.
I'm not entirely sure what I am supposed to be doing, and if this is going to hit me harder later and if I should be prepared for that.
To provide some more context, it's currently after midnight and I'm sitting in my office over an hour from everyone I know. My job is an hour from my home so I generally alternate spending the night here on work days to save on gas. Tonight was a night I was staying here, because I have a lot of work to do tomorrow and I'm generally the only one who can do it. I think my wife might have wanted me to come home though, even though I wouldn't have gotten there until well after 1am.
The bulk of my family (parents, sister, grandmother, aunts & uncles) are at a hospital a few hours in the other direction.
I'd always been close with my grandfather. Prior to getting married and moving about an hour away he was always just a few miles down the road from me (aside from college and the few months I lived in Atlanta). He was a good man. He was also a very strong man. One of my earliest memories is playing in the graveyard at church and accidentally having a headstone fall over and pin my leg. He ran over and hurled it off of me with one hand and then picked me up. I don't even know how old I was but it was definitely a long time ago.
These last few years he hasn't been as strong. He's gotten a lot slimmer and had to carry around an oxygen tank. He also became more retrospective and at family gatherings always made a note to say how proud he was of his family. A couple of weeks ago he had to go to the hospital, and then they transferred him to the one that's a little further away and he's been there since.
At least two family members have been there with him every day since then, with a large group of us going the first weekend.
At this point I should point out that I hate being in hospitals. I spent more than my fair share of time in hospitals when I was a kid (for those that don't know, I'm missing my right hand) and they always cause me to be extremely unsettled the whole time I'm in one. It is rare for me to willingly go to a hospital, but this time I went.
Anyways, only two family members could go in to see him at a time while he was in intensive care, so my wife and I went in. He looked so tiny in the bed. Unfortunately he was also restrained because he was fighting against all the tubes and things in him (at this point even having one going down his throat). He was mouthing something to me, but I couldn't make it out, and tried my best to talk to him and calm him. Without his hearing aide I'm not sure if he could hear me.
After that we went back to the waiting room with the rest of the family. Before going home a few hours later, I went back in alone to see him again, but he was asleep. This would be the last time I saw him.
After that day he got a lot better and had the tube removed from his throat and everything. Then worse again, then better. He could even get out of bed and walk around or sit in the arm chair in his room. He really wanted to go home, though. Apparently they had told him that today they were going to do a test and if he passed that he should be able to go home in a few days. This really got his hopes up.
Unfortunately sometime this afternoon a nurse came in and told him the test wouldn't be today because it was a holiday. This seemed to really depress him and he got out of the chair and climbed back in bed. All the color faded from his face and shortly after that he started to complain about stomach pain (a new symptom).
He died a while after that. I'm told it was peacefully. I hope it was, and that he was filled with a sense of contentment over leading a good life and raising a good family.
Now I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Obviously the act of typing out this post is somewhat therapeutic, but I haven't had to deal with this before. I'm also still at work, and when I wake up in the morning I will be at work with plenty of work to do. However, even if I am capable of doing my job in the morning, I wonder if family members may need me to go be with them now, even though nobody asked for me to do so.
I'm going to go to sleep now, assuming thoughts don't keep me up. I don't know what I'll do in the morning, nor when I'll see this thread again. Thanks to those who took the time to read this. Nobody should feel obligated to respond, but I had to put it somewhere.
I have been very fortunate and am over thirty years old with this being my first really close death. Prior to this there had just been a few distant relatives or people from high school I hadn't seen in years.
I'm not entirely sure what I am supposed to be doing, and if this is going to hit me harder later and if I should be prepared for that.
To provide some more context, it's currently after midnight and I'm sitting in my office over an hour from everyone I know. My job is an hour from my home so I generally alternate spending the night here on work days to save on gas. Tonight was a night I was staying here, because I have a lot of work to do tomorrow and I'm generally the only one who can do it. I think my wife might have wanted me to come home though, even though I wouldn't have gotten there until well after 1am.
The bulk of my family (parents, sister, grandmother, aunts & uncles) are at a hospital a few hours in the other direction.
I'd always been close with my grandfather. Prior to getting married and moving about an hour away he was always just a few miles down the road from me (aside from college and the few months I lived in Atlanta). He was a good man. He was also a very strong man. One of my earliest memories is playing in the graveyard at church and accidentally having a headstone fall over and pin my leg. He ran over and hurled it off of me with one hand and then picked me up. I don't even know how old I was but it was definitely a long time ago.
These last few years he hasn't been as strong. He's gotten a lot slimmer and had to carry around an oxygen tank. He also became more retrospective and at family gatherings always made a note to say how proud he was of his family. A couple of weeks ago he had to go to the hospital, and then they transferred him to the one that's a little further away and he's been there since.
At least two family members have been there with him every day since then, with a large group of us going the first weekend.
At this point I should point out that I hate being in hospitals. I spent more than my fair share of time in hospitals when I was a kid (for those that don't know, I'm missing my right hand) and they always cause me to be extremely unsettled the whole time I'm in one. It is rare for me to willingly go to a hospital, but this time I went.
Anyways, only two family members could go in to see him at a time while he was in intensive care, so my wife and I went in. He looked so tiny in the bed. Unfortunately he was also restrained because he was fighting against all the tubes and things in him (at this point even having one going down his throat). He was mouthing something to me, but I couldn't make it out, and tried my best to talk to him and calm him. Without his hearing aide I'm not sure if he could hear me.
After that we went back to the waiting room with the rest of the family. Before going home a few hours later, I went back in alone to see him again, but he was asleep. This would be the last time I saw him.
After that day he got a lot better and had the tube removed from his throat and everything. Then worse again, then better. He could even get out of bed and walk around or sit in the arm chair in his room. He really wanted to go home, though. Apparently they had told him that today they were going to do a test and if he passed that he should be able to go home in a few days. This really got his hopes up.
Unfortunately sometime this afternoon a nurse came in and told him the test wouldn't be today because it was a holiday. This seemed to really depress him and he got out of the chair and climbed back in bed. All the color faded from his face and shortly after that he started to complain about stomach pain (a new symptom).
He died a while after that. I'm told it was peacefully. I hope it was, and that he was filled with a sense of contentment over leading a good life and raising a good family.
Now I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Obviously the act of typing out this post is somewhat therapeutic, but I haven't had to deal with this before. I'm also still at work, and when I wake up in the morning I will be at work with plenty of work to do. However, even if I am capable of doing my job in the morning, I wonder if family members may need me to go be with them now, even though nobody asked for me to do so.
I'm going to go to sleep now, assuming thoughts don't keep me up. I don't know what I'll do in the morning, nor when I'll see this thread again. Thanks to those who took the time to read this. Nobody should feel obligated to respond, but I had to put it somewhere.
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As to what you are feeling or not feeling or should be feeling: I am a firm believer that there is no wrong way to react to death. If you need to be hysterical and cry, do it. If you don't need to cry, that's fine too. Everyone is different and every situation is different.
Like Skeith said, you may just not have much of a reaction, or you may be going about your business tomorrow and suddenly have it 'hit' you. Do whatever you need to do, take care of yourself and your family. Even if you can function at work, it might be good to go be with your family anyway. Chances are someone needs a strong shoulder and perhaps you can provide that for them.
My condolences.
Everyone is affected by every death differently. I realize that's not very helpful, but it's true. You may stay fairly numb, you may break down over the next few days... or maybe nothing and then one day five years from now you sob yourself to sleep one night. It's kind of a crapshoot.
The only advice I feel I can give you really is whatever you need to do or feel, let yourself do or feel it.
Not to be callous, but I think everyone above pretty much hit how to deal with the grief bit already, so I skipped it.
Everyone else is pretty much right. None of us can tell you how this is going to go, because every human processes grief and pain differently. I know when my grandfather died, I was pretty stoic and it never "hit me". I just kind of moved on. I had my grief, but it never overcame me. When my dog died on the other hand, I was a mess. Was it because my dog meant more to me than grandpa? Probably not...it was just the way my mind processed the grief differently both times.
What everyone else has said is true: everyone reacts differently to death. It's a very complex and emotional subject, and there's no way to tell how you'll react until you're in that situation. What is very, very important to remember is that there is absolutely no wrong way to react. Sometimes people don't get knocked too far out of their emotional equilibrium, and that's ok. It doesn't minimize how much you cared for your grandfather, and you should remember that. It sounds like you have a really cool family, and that helps a bunch with getting through times like this. One more thing: stress and different reactions to events can cause some tension between family members. If you have a more stoic reaction (or just have that appearance), some people could potentially be upset that you're not reacting in the "right" way. Don't sweat that, just make sure to communicate with them what you are feeling. Again, not crying or breaking down doesn't mean you cared for him any less than anyone else.
Exactly this.
I just try to remember that while I can't always control what happens to me and the people I care about, I can control how I react to it.
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I had one thing to add that no one else had mentioned. He was your Grandfather, but to someone else he was a Father and a Husband. It's painful to lose someone you care about, but I can assure you it's no where near as painful as losing a parent or a spouse. So one thing you should absolutely do is make sure you're doing whatever you can to help your Grandmother and Parent right now.
So yes as others have said, I agree that you should deal with your Grandfather's passing in whatever way you feel is best for you. With the exception that if those two people need you, then you be there. And if they say they don't need you, they're probably lying and you should be there for them anyway.
Since about 2000, she had been either in a wheelchair or in a walker. She was a young grandma, being only 39 when I was born, so she was in her early 50's at this time and I know it was very hard for someone with a mind as young as her to be limited the way she was. My grandparents were travelers and were constantly driving around the country, towing a fifth wheel behind them and visiting family, along with taking cruises overseas.
Starting a few years ago, she started having issues with her stomach again which led to her losing tons of weight and being in and out of the hospital with little improvement. She came out to visit the summer of 2011 shortly before going back home where she was in and out of the hospital again. She was home for christmas and then went back in shortly after. My mother was living with me in march of 2012 when we got a call that my grandma probably wouldnt last much longer and that she wanted to be taken off of oxygen and to just go because she was tired of living the way she was without any chance of getting better. My mom and I booked a last minute flight out to see her because they were going to take her off the next morning. Our flight got cancelled due to wind so we had to run and find another flight with a different airline, costing us a few extra hours. When we got to the hospice, they had already taken her off of the oxygen, and she wad fading fast.
I dont know what I expected walking into her room. I think in my mind, I was picturing her just as she always had, and that she wasnt really going to go and that maybe she would change her mind about going off the oxygen and exploring other options. I wasnt prepared for what she had become. She was a frail shell of the woman I had known. Her eyes had completely turned red due to lack of oxygen I guess? and she was writhing slowly back and forth across her bed. I broke down and just lost it. I sat in the hallway, afraid to see her again. I just couldnt take it. My family talked me in to going in and saying goodbye to her, I told her I loved her very much, and thanked her for always being there for me.
She passed away early the next morning, after we had all left the room to regroup. We figure she didnt want any of us there when she went. The hospice staff were surprised that she had held on so long.
It was and is still very upsetting. I will never forget what she looked like in her last hours. In a way, I am glad that I got to tell her goodbye properly, but I still wish that I hadnt seen her that way. One thing that will always bother me, is that, before we got there, my grandfather and her son (my uncle), were with her while she was still coherent. She couldnt talk so she wrote some small letters to convey to them things. In her last coherent moments, she told my uncle that she had changed her mind and didnt want to go. That she had made the decision out of frustration and wished she could reverse it. It will always bother me that the reason it took so long for her to go after being off of the oxygen is that she was fighting until the end to not go because she had changed her mind. It tears me up to think that she was laying there, trapped in her own mind, afraid of what was coming. My wife says that it was just her expressing a fear that anyone would have and that she was just acting as anyone would. While that may be, it will still bother me for the rest of my life. Mainly because I wasnt ready for her to be gone.
I dont think that it ever gets better or easier, you just go for longer and longer periods where you dont think about it. I still get tears in my eyes everytime something happens and I think about calling to tell her or when my daughter reminisces about some time spent with her. I will feel fine for weeks, and then something will trigger a memory of her and I just feel that hole of her being gone. Like I said, it never gets easier to remember, it just gets easier to forget for a while.
But take care of yourself and your family. Its not easy for anyone, and everyone, including you will need a shoulder to lean on. As hard as it was for me losing my grandma, I know it has been far harder on my mom to lose her mother.
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I ended up working half a day on Tuesday since I was already at work anyways and wrapped up everything that I needed to be there for that needed to get done, then I took the rest of the week off. I then went straight to my grandmother's house where everyone was gathering.
The next day was the visitation, and that was a little rough. It was open-casket, but they had made him look better than he had in years. There was also a huge turn out and lots of people I hadn't seen in a long time.
Today was the funeral, and it had some rough parts too. One thing I was not prepared for was seeing people cry who I had never seen cry before (not that there is the slightest thing wrong with them doing so, it just caught me off guard). When the casket was closed, the thought that I would never see him again popped in my head and that was a little rough too.
So far I think I've been keeping it together better than others, so I've been trying to help everyone else with whatever I can. However, there have been several times where I've realized it hasn't really sunken in yet (thinking about talking to him when I see him on my next visit or something like that) so I'm worried I may still be hit harder in the near future when it really sinks in.
All in all, I imagine things went as well as they could have, but it has still been a tough week for a lot of people.
Thank you again to those that took the time to read this.
I was a lot like this after my grandparents died, and after their funeral. It didn't sink in for me for a long, long time. And then.. well.. it was a good thing I was in therapy already. :P
Best of luck getting through.
my grandma's been gone for almost 7 years now. It's easier than it was. But there are still times where I think about how much she'd love to know what I'm doing with my life that it still hits and it still hurts.
you'll heal in your own time, you'll weep in your own time. let it take you on the ride. it's a crap ride, i'm not gonna lie, but ride it anyway.
My thoughts are with you, best of luck.
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