My grandparents both lived with us for most of my life. Over the summers when I was a kid, my brother and I would stay up late playing video games and my grandparents would sit in the same room watching TV. My grandfather would make fun of whatever my brother and I were doing. My grandmother would tell him to leave us alone. It was gentle fun ribbing all around.
My freshmen year of college, my grandmother died suddenly while she was visiting my aunt in California. I didn’t even know she was sick. It was such a shock.
My grandfather was devastated. He used to tell my dad “I had no idea how much I needed her”. He was diagnosed with lung cancer a month after she died. My parents and my aunts and uncles all took turns taking him to chemotherapy. We all tried to keep him going, but the dude had given up. He seemed like he didn’t think there was any point in going on without her. We all tried to raise his spirits so he could keep fighting, but he just didn’t have it in him anymore.
My sophomore of college, my mom would call me periodically and tell me “I think Dada is going to die today.” It happened so much, eventually it just became background noise to me. I was home on spring break, I went to see him at the rehab center and he was telling me he could see grandmother. Being 19, I figured he was just delirious from all the drugs. I went home and went to bed. Next morning, my mom called me and said “Dada got sent to the ER, I think today is the day”. He had been sent to the ER so many times at that point, I was kinda numb to it and I just went back to sleep. I woke up an hour later and got my brother “hey we gotta go to the hospital and check on dada”. No rush, very routine at this point.
We get there and the doctor wants to talk to my dad like asap. So I called him and told him the doctor needs to talk to you. My dad rushed over. Doc tells us my grandfather had a GI bleed but he was too frail to survive the procedure to fix it. So there was nothing they could do.
My cousin came after that. So we sat there in the ER for hours. Looking at the heart monitor. Watching it slowly count down from 100. It took hours. The four of us silently sitting there. None of us knew what to say.
As soon as the heart rate monitor dropped to 0, we were all in tears. Nobody could speak.
My grandparents both lived with us for most of my life. Over the summers when I was a kid, my brother and I would stay up late playing video games and my grandparents would sit in the same room watching TV. My grandfather would make fun of whatever my brother and I were doing. My grandmother would tell him to leave us alone. It was gentle fun ribbing all around.
My freshmen year of college, my grandmother died suddenly while she was visiting my aunt in California. I didn’t even know she was sick. It was such a shock.
My grandfather was devastated. He used to tell my dad “I had no idea how much I needed her”. He was diagnosed with lung cancer a month after she died. My parents and my aunts and uncles all took turns taking him to chemotherapy. We all tried to keep him going, but the dude had given up. He seemed like he didn’t think there was any point in going on without her. We all tried to raise his spirits so he could keep fighting, but he just didn’t have it in him anymore.
My sophomore of college, my mom would call me periodically and tell me “I think Dada is going to die today.” It happened so much, eventually it just became background noise to me. I was home on spring break, I went to see him at the rehab center and he was telling me he could see grandmother. Being 19, I figured he was just delirious from all the drugs. I went home and went to bed. Next morning, my mom called me and said “Dada got sent to the ER, I think today is the day”. He had been sent to the ER so many times at that point, I was kinda numb to it and I just went back to sleep. I woke up an hour later and got my brother “hey we gotta go to the hospital and check on dada”. No rush, very routine at this point.
We get there and the doctor wants to talk to my dad like asap. So I called him and told him the doctor needs to talk to you. My dad rushed over. Doc tells us my grandfather had a GI bleed but he was too frail to survive the procedure to fix it. So there was nothing they could do.
My cousin came after that. So we sat there in the ER for hours. Looking at the heart monitor. Watching it slowly count down from 100. It took hours. The four of us silently sitting there. None of us knew what to say.
As soon as the heart rate monitor dropped to 0, we were all in tears. Nobody could speak.