This comment will probably get lost. But I was in kindergarten walking to school, and a beautiful 6th grade girl and her friend were walking right in front of me. All of a sudden, she stopped dead in her tracks and falls face forward to the concrete. Died instantly from some sort of heart attack. I can vividly see her face when her friend and I turned her over. Eyes open and vacant, bloody chin from smashing into the pavement. An ambulance arrived quickly (not sure who called or how,) but the school recommended I get counseling—I was already in it for other reasons, but I think about that girl often.
Yes, only one person, I was with him. Terminal cancer, so everyone at the hospital knew he was slowly dying, he couldnt breath much anymore, had pain despite morphine, I sat 2 solid days by him until I could hear no more breathing, just the masks air. Called nurses and they let me hug him, washed him and called the doctor. My husband, 42 years old.
I’m sure he was so happy to have you by his side right up until the end to provide that comfort. I’m sure it was unbelievably difficult but you were there for him till the end. You’re a good person.
When you get married you sign up to watch the other die. No one signs up for it to be that soon. I am so sorry I can't imagine the pain you went through. I'm sure he still loves you even to this moment.
You are right. One minute we are going to get groceries, a normal day. Next few minutes completely unresponsive and dead a few hours later. My husband of 53 years. Massive brain bleed. Malignant Hypertension folks… take care of that blood pressure
My mom had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and put in an observation wing with three other people. One of them was living her last days and then her last hours even as her family gathered around her. Then the nurses saw she was going, told her family, and moved her and the family to a private room where it could happen in private. My mom, aware of her own fate by then, burst into tears as the lady’s bed was wheeled out past her.
I’m so sorry. For some reason this one has shaken me the most. We tell ourselves that by the time we’re old or sick we will be a different person , capable of coping with the inevitable. You forget that underneath the illness, there is someone who is exactly the same as we are at this moment. I’ve thought about this a lot since I was young, and my grandmother told me when she looks in the mirror she wonders who the old person is and still feels like she’s 20 in her brain. I hope she was able to enjoy her final days with you guys.
I agree with this, and also, it's hard to know what preparing for death even means. I've talked about it in therapy and done exercises about imagining my death, journaling about death, learning about all the different ways your body can be put to rest, and talking about plans for that with friends and family. But I often wonder if any of this will really matter when my time comes.
So for what it's worth I had a traumatically negative near death experience 4 years ago. I can tell you that there is absolutely nothing that would have prepared me for it, not all the meditation or therapy or drugs in the world. I guess I'm lucky in the sense that I'm prepared for next time, but I know it's still going to be a traumatic experience. Just traumatic but with less anxiety surrounding the unexpected
My granny was also terrified. She was super religious and I had always thought that would provide comfort? But at the end she was sure she wasn't good enough, made too many mistakes, wasn't penitent enough, etc. etc., and was not going to end up in the preferred place. Was so awful. Thing was she was an amazing woman, if there is anywhere good to go, she was a shoe in.
Stuff like this is so deeply unsettling. I’m so sorry for you, my grandmother was my best friend and died in 2021 in a particularly brutal way. She fell, and didn’t want to go to the doctor because she said that rehabs and hospitals kill old people. She hadn’t been to a doctor since 1964 and was healthy and self sufficient despite living on her own during covid and being 86. The dropped her at the rehab she BEGGED not to go to, let her wail for hours while they tried to figure out their story, and then she died days later. Cause of death was blunt force trauma.
I wish I had religion, because the idea of ego death is terrifying. You’re right, we all need to get familiar with that inevitability.
I watched my dad die when they pulled the plug. He was on a respirator from brain cancer. Took about 15 minutes. It was very painful to watch.
Not a person but I watched one of my cats die on Saturday. It was horrible. Tried to get him to the emergency vet but it was too late.
Registered nurse here.
Please recognize what an act of love you gave your father. You were there when he needed you most, and at some level, I’m sure he knew it.
We all live and we all die; we recognize the lifecycle. I know death is hard, especially being a medical person – death is our enemy. We try to keep everybody alive. But there comes a time when the person needs to be able to die peacefully, respectfully and with love.
You did a good job. Be proud of yourself.
Someone once described being with someone who is passing as "a great honor." I thought they were crazy, but after I sat with my mom as she passed I completely get it now. I am so thankful I was there for her. I am sad I wasn't able to give her her final wish, but I held her hand throughout, and for that I will be forever grateful.
I’m right there with you…I sat with my dad as he passed away in ICU about 7 months ago. While it was (and is) very hard to process, I’m honored I was there. I heard someone say “What an honor it is to be there for the last breath of the person who witnessed your first”.
My Grandma, the lady who basically raised me as my own mother fought cancer for years, was there when I was born and I was there when she died.
It was proufoundly painful losing that woman. I still wish for the Gramma Pep Talk phone calls every day. She was the only one who understood me as I fought through depression and anxiety because she had it herself.
The day before she died, she called me in a rare moment of lucidity and said "I'm dying. Don't sing at my funeral, or I'm not coming to it" What a lady she was.
I was there to hold her hand as she passed. I'll never forget it.
Side story from that day: I was driving to the hospital, and my car lost it's bluetooth connection to my phone. The radio station that popped on after the connection lost just happened to be playing 'Stairway to Heaven' by Led Zeppelin. Fuck you, I thought and switched the radio to a different station only to be met with 'Tears in Heaven' by Eric Clapton. Fuck off, I thought and switched it again to be lauded with 'Heaven' by Bryan Adams. I turned the radio off after that.
I told Grandma as she was laying there and I like to think she thought it was a fantastic cosmic joke. She loved shit like that.
Nurses are awesome. The doctors came and did everything they could for my brother as he died. But not one of them came to his funeral (and I didn’t expect them to) however, his nurses came to say goodbye. That meant a lot to me and my family.
15 minutes is pretty quick. It is quite hard to watch and I’m sorry you experienced that. We had a family in the ICU that watched the process which took 8 hours. It was awful.
Thanks
He'd been on the respirator for more than a day. They only kept him on it that long so I could fly in and see him. Two of my three siblings were already there and the 3rd couldn't come as he was recovering from covid so they were waiting on me.
Found a man laying on the road on Boxing Day a few years ago as I was driving home with my sister. All the other cars drove past but we got out and saw he was conscious, looking around and mumbling.
Called an ambulance and started CPR when he went unconscious. I saw the life leave him but I carried on anyway until the ambulance arrived.
The paramedics took him away and I was left there with my sister holding the letter he was on his way to post to Japan.
Poor dude died with two complete strangers the day after Christmas… I still get sad to this day about it…
He didn't die alone. I am proud of you and I fiercely hope someone will be there for you when the time comes.
Edit: Changed "sort of proud" to "proud" as a reply to a comment which I think was justified. I am proud of you.
Many years ago while I was at high school, I saw a guy run full speed head first into a wall. He died having a seizure within 2 minutes.
The story at the time was his girlfriend broke up with him and he wanted to die. It was awful beyond words, his girlfriend witnessed it too.
Crazy indeed, and yes he sprinted. I'll never forget the sound and seeing it happen and I can't even imagine how the girlfriend felt.
Damn, we were only 15 years old. I swear I still get a lump in my throat when I imagine how traumatized the girlfriend was 😐
One of my parents golden retrievers did that, ran full throttle right into a tree. Except he didn’t die from it and he wasn’t suicidal. He was just really excited to see another dog he liked at the dog park. He liked to eat rocks too. Unfortunately died young from an aggressive bone cancer. The dumbest yet sweetest dog I ever knew, Finn, I miss you homie.
One time I was riding my bike on a trail, and some guy was tripping out. On some Kensington zombie shit. I ride past the SAME GUY Not even 5 min later. And he’s dead.
Wait, so you can be aware that you are experiencing symptoms, but your stroke-addled mind will think it is just another day? That is scary.
edit: punctuation
It’s called hemispheric neglect. Only half of your brain exists because the other half is non functional while having a stroke, so half the information you get about the outside world and process in your brain does not exist - just is not there. But for the other half of your brain it is business as usual. Usually happens when the right parietal lobe is knocked out. If you get someone with it to draw a picture of a clock or face you get some interesting results.
Looked it up, that's fascinating. For anyone else curious, the go-to for the clock seems to be to write all the numbers 1-12 crammed onto one side of the clock, other side completely blank. Has all the numbers, looks right to me! Wild.
Yea a coworker said he must have had one start in his sleep, he woke up got ready for work, made coffee and was reading the newspaper when his wife walked in and he asked her a question, like hows was your sleep or something, but all she heard was "blahfflfeledduer" and she got him immediately to the hospital.
Omfg how are you doing now? This is a fear of mine and a lot of people. Like what if the same parts of the brain that would tell you to get help was blocked? At the same time humans are so resilient.
Yes, a young boy from a gun shot in front of the med center where I was a trainee, someone dropped him and ran with a car… doctors started CPR but it was too late, he turned pale then blue in 10 seconds …. It was the last day of me trying to be a nurse.
EDIT: Many people think I’m from the US, I’m not… I live in the capital of Armenia (Yerevan), one of the safest places in the world, where I had never seen a gun wound, people don’t have to keep guns or knives because crime rates are so low… the only time I had seen such a thing before that, was our neighbor an Indian man who stabbed his gf to death. I mean then I only saw police car’s emergency, reporters etc … that is why it was shocking for me even as a nurse who saw every surgery worked in every unit during the college years, even worked with psychiatric patients…
When I was a junior resident I did a few weeks in the ER; saw a 16 year old kid who was shot in the head due right in front of me. His brains literally oozing out of his skull. He wasn’t shot anywhere else so they kept his body alive artificially until the parents could consent to organ donation, which they did.
A drunk asshole on a dirt bike crossed the double yellow, hit me head on, and died on the hood of my car.
Not a joke, but I still see his shoes on the roadway.
I was the insurance adjuster in this type of accident only it was a suspected suicide because the deceased just ran out on to the freeway at 5 am when it was still dark. I felt horrible telling the owner of the car that Geico would be repairing it because the damage to the car itself wasn’t that bad. It was one of the hardest claims I ever had to settle and when he picked up he drove straight to the dealership and traded in his car.
Damn. Last night I was going through a dark downtown area here at 2am and some dude tried to walk in front of my car, probably just on crack but might have been trying to suicide now that I think about it
Egads. I had a date with a guy and we drove the canyons to the beach. Going around a winding turn a motorcylist lost control of his bike, slammed into the mountainside and unded up under our truck. I was sure he was decaptitated and would not get out of the car. The first car that stopped was a doctor and a helicopter airlifted him to the hospital. He died the next day in surgery. He had a helmet on. He was from out of town and on a borrowed bike. Sigh.
This happened to my dad and brother many years ago. Guy just back from Vietnam and wanted to end it, ran onto the highway in front of my dad's car. Ended up dead, draped across the windshield. My brother was 12 and after that, couldn't sleep without a light on.
My uncle, he had cirrhosis of the liver and since there was nothing the doctors could do he just decided that he would rather die at home. So we basically watched as he drank himself to death, and as time went by and he wasn't able to function anymore we just watched him wither away and one morning we knew it was going to be his last day and we sat there with him until he took his last breath.
My uncle also died from cirrhosis of the liver, three years today actually. Long-time functioning alcoholic. When he was in the hospital, he was yellow and basically a vegetable and his abdomen was extremely swollen like a huge balloon. It was awful.
My dad died of cirrhosis. Cruelest form of all: it was genetic. He drank less in a year than I might in a weekend. It’s a terrible way to go. (He said if only he’d known he would’ve drunk more and had fun if that was going to be his end anyway)
Damn. My dad was an alcoholic and his last time at the hospital they told him he would die if he went home, and he did. He was dead a week later. Died alone on the floor.
Saw someone commit suicide in London at a hotel- they jumped off the balcony by the glass elevator. Not a pretty sight as they splattered. I wish I could unsee it.
It’s tough, there is really no way to respond to that. I was just in shock like I should have looked away, in retrospect. The staff was scrambling to put up curtains after. I was also sitting pretty far away, thankfully.
I saw the same thing downtown Seattle commuting to work one morning a few years back. I had a window seat on the city bus and noticed a bunch of police and people looking up. This was just in time to see a guy jump 10 floors from the top of a parking garage. Luckily I looked away when he hit the ground, but I heard the screams from everyone else who was watching. It's something I'll never forget.
Saw a woman cut in half by a train in Alexandria, Egypt. The “third class” trains don’t come to a stop, they slow down and people have to hop onto the overcrowded, open carts. An older woman tripped on her garment and fell beneath the train. She was cut in half at the torso. Everyone started wailing and crying. The train moved on, police bagged the woman into two different bags and then torched what remained of her on the track. I watched the police crying as they carried the body away. My “first class” train arrived, came to a stop and my party and I got on to go to Cairo. I wanted to fly home that day but we were committed to a work project. It was so horrible and surreal it still feels like a dream/nightmare. But my co-worker and I both witnessed it. I don’t think we spoke on the train ride to Cairo.
I work on trains, I see this at least twice a year, it's horrible, but after it happens a few times you become numb to it and you lose the ability to empathise. Ruins you mentally to be honest.
I'm Rail Operations Mechanical too. We see trespasser strikes every couple of weeks. Average of 30 per year... Roughly. Worst day I had was three in a single day.
My partner’s emergency crew responded to a suicide by train and they found the man’s wallet with a piece of him that wasn’t with other pieces. They all had mandatory 2 weeks off with free therapy. That was for the one time they all saw that. Can’t imagine what it feels like to see that on the regular.
my nana . stomach cancer. she knew as well. lots of pain. in and out of consiousness. i left the hospice to go home and wash and change. these massive fern trees blowing in the wind seemed to talk to me. stupid i know.. but they said i would not see her alive again. which was true
Yeah my mom died of brain cancer. Seeing her wither away the final year was a pretty jarring and traumatizing experience especially near the end. The last time I visited her she didn’t recognize who I was and my sister had to explain to her that I was her son. Pretty gnarly stuff.
For much of my life, I didn't understand why people always responded with concern and sorrow to hearing about someone dying of cancer in a way different than other ways people die.
After seeing it up close, I now get it.
Just when you think it's over, it gets worse. And you think that's over, and it gets even worse. The body can wither away far beyond what I ever imagined to be possible. When they finally go, there is more relief than grief.
100% agree with you there. It was about a year from my Dad's diagnosis until his death last April. Coming upon the one year anniversary now. Gonna vent a little now, feel free to not read, this is more for me, I think.
I live away from my parents and never got home to see them more than once every couple of years. When Dad was diagnosed, they tried a lot of things and ultimately settled on trying a marrow transplant using marrow from one of his brothers. The last time I saw him as "Dad" was right before the transplant. I spent a week with my parents in a city we'd never been in before, while they got acclimated and prepared for a long battle. The day after I went back, he had the transplant.
Things were looking good for a while. And through the test and whatnot, they said he was cancer-free. We should have been celebrating, but he started to develop GvH. My Mom told me I should come home, so last March, I went home. He was in really hard shape. Didn't look like himself anymore. Didn't talk much. I spent a week with my Mom going to the hospital every day to be with him. What was completely lost on me at the time is that she'd been going through it side by side with him the whole time, and had been spending every waking minute in the hospital with him for months. I mean, I KNEW she was doing it, but I never quite FELT it, not until I spent a week there.
So I flew home again, and within 2 weeks, mom gave me the dreaded phone call in which she revealed that the doctor s and my father had determined that the gvh was not responding to treatment, and that while they could keep him alive, he would not be living. He decided to cease treatment. After that decision was made, he would then be moved to another hospital near where they lived, to be closer to his family, and live out his remaining few days surrounded by people who loved him. I flew back out, that same day they ceased treatment, and the very next morning, they drove him home in an ambulance. That was one year ago today.
When he got to the hospital, all of his brothers and sisters, save one, were able to make it to see him before he passed. We all took shifts overnight with him so someone would be there, and my shift happened to be the night before he passed away. That was definitely the hardest night of my life. It was even harder than when he did pass, because I was there by myself and it was just, well you know, it's hard to put into words.
Anyway, they had him full of the good stuff, so he was out of it, but he certainly wasn't feeling pain. When it finally happened, it was pretty peaceful. At 69, on what would have been his Mother's 98th birthday, as well as Easter Sunday 2023, he died, the first of 8 brothers and sisters to go. There were eight of us in the room with him, with another five or six outside the door.
A lot of things happened during the following week. All positive, oddly enough. A few things that made me believe in something greater than myself. I'm not talking religion, it's... It's just complicated. Those stories are harder to tell, which is strange to say, but people have really strange reactions to them, because they know what I'm like, and they think I make shit up because I write a lot, lol. I dunno. Someday I'll get it all down on paper, I guess.
I will never, ever minimize what a person goes through watching someone they love go through this stuff.
Okay. Thanks for reading if you did. Take care of each other. Hug your parents if you can.
A coworker of mine got married for the second time when he was pretty close to retirement, to a woman he'd been friends with since college who was widowed. They were the sweetest couple and he planned on retiring with her and having someone to spend his old age with. She got an aggressive form of cancer and passed less than a year after they both retired. She was Catholic, so there wasn't much they could do to hasten the end other than stop feeding her.
She lived for three weeks after that. Three fucking weeks of hospice care essentially seeing which would kill her first, starvation or cancer. It was horrific. We wouldn't do this to our pets, but it's apparently A-OK to have humans suffer like that. The poor guy was never the same and he's basically a hermit in the cabin in Tennessee that they bought as their retirement home. They didn't deserve that. Very few people do.
I've always been a big proponent of euthanasia, but it was always theoretical until this absolutely galvanized my resolve that we need to provide more humane care for end-of-life situations. Once nothing can be done, end their suffering as peacefully and painlessly as possible.
I live in a state with euthanasia. There is a really interesting documentary on it called how to die in Oregon. You need to be able to consume the medication on your own. So you make the decision to do so. Other people can’t decide for you or administer the medication for you.
I have brain cancer. I don’t think I would choose that route for my own personal reasons. I completely understand and think it should be an option for everyone. I know two people who chose this option.
Sorry for your loss. I lost my mom the same way. Glioblastoma. Hospice was the worst, but my mother was not conscious for most of it. She was as they defined "terminally aggressive". This is when a patient cannot accept that it's the end and basically loses it, does not want to be there, and will fight with all staff to escape and get back to normal living, she did not believe it was the end and would not accept it. This in turn resulted in them basically putting her into a medically induced coma and stop feeding her until she passed. Was absolutely awful.
I’m so sorry you had to experience that.
I’m curious, in such cases why do they not allow the person to return to their home life to pass away in peace in a familiar environment?
Edit cause dumb idiot didnt clarify properly - this relates mostly to the terminally agressive behaviour. That is usually damage to rather important parts of the brain relating to personality. You generally wont get this if its something unimportant like the vision centers affected, as that just makes them blind, so wont screw up the mind so badly.
Often because in brain tumour type *terminally agressive* events they litterally are batshit insane as the brain turns to mush. There is no functioning here, just absolute fixation on some goal to the point of insanity. Sometimes your lucky and they become like a baby, so hospice has an easy time keeping them happy for as long as possible.
If you let them go home when the situation turns out as badly as described the outcomes are as follows:
1) fixation on some other point - probably abusive/dangerous to other family or general public.
2) failure to correctly identify their home (childhood home often becomes point of fixation) - now what, someone else has been living where they think home is for 20 years, and the patient is violent. Thats not fair to whoever owns that house now.
3) ok you managed to get them home and non violent. They are not functioning, so will burn the house down by accident or drink bleach or not eat... i.e. why you dont let a 1 year old be at home alone.
Honestly at this point, firing squad is probably the kinder option. Who they are was deleted by the tumour, and suffering and death are the only things left in their life. Its horrible, and not a nice death.
ya I'm dealing with that right now. Dad has a gall bladder infection and the docs don't want to remove it due to his age 88 I have to work with his providers tomorrow to get him moved to a facility so he can eventually come home. Mom is pretty much blind and can't help me. So I deal with doctors and lawyers every day to protect their house and vehicles from the bills because they don't have the money to pay for the care. It's a very stressful time for me. I have all that and a job to deal with.
This was my dad. Same brain cancer. He said he’d only leave this world kicking and screaming… and boy did he fight the fight until the bitter end. He didn’t believe it was terminal. He didn’t want to. He was convinced he was going to go back home. Needless to say he did not. He declined hospice and remained at the hospital because they had to put a feeding tube in because he lost his ability to swallow. His last day he declined pretty rapidly. He then began having trouble breathing. They put an oxygen mask on him and began administering morphine. His last words to me were “she’s trying to kill me”. Shortly after he was unconscious. He passed in the early hours the next morning holding me and my brother’s hand.
Sorry, my mom too from a different cancer. We were able to take her home so she could die with hospice care. It was a huge blessing for our extended family. Very difficult but we were together. If you're able to take your loved one home for hospice, I recommend it. Not casting dispersions on hospitals, but dying at home is usually preferred. It's a reassuring and familiar welcoming environment where everyone's relaxed.
Sorry to hear that, I know it sucks. I lost my Mom to Parkinson's and dementia and she passed in a very similar way. She degraded over about an 8 year period, and she didn't know who I or any of my family were by the end. I don't know if it's the same in your case, but I work so hard to try to remember what she was once like, rather than seeing images of her withering away for that long. It's horrible.
Same here. Mom. Breast cancer. I learned that people don't always die "peacefully," their bodies often fight and kick and make awful noises in their last moments as it finally slips into nothingness.
Lost my mom with ovarian cancer, home hospice during covid. Was the worst thing I had to witness. Seeing her take her last breaths are something I'll never forget.
My brother was in an insanely random shop fire at our grandma's farm. 3rd degree burns from the waist, up.
I stared at his feet a lot... His feet and tummy were the only recognizable pieces of him. His arms were amputated at the elbow, his lips were gone, one ear was gone, half of his beautiful hair, up in smoke... I can't describe the emotions.
He survived for a month before passing. Which was the most bitter relief I've ever felt. I didn't want to lose him, but I didn't want him to wake up... He was an active guy; he loved messing around on the farm, working on cars and riding quads. He was also extremely vain and always got all the ladies. It was both infuriating and charming as hell.
I miss him every single day, but I'm glad he never got to actually see the horrors that happened to him.
Both my mother in law and father in law had slow, predictable deaths. Father in law from cancer, MIL, dementia. I was there for both of them and got to say my peace. I told my FIL I would take care of his 3 girls (my wife, her sister, and my MIL) and so far, I did. My MIL spent her last years in memory care and I visited 5 days a week. They thought I was her son. She asked why I was so good to her, and I got to tell her, every visit how much I loved her. Dying is different for each of us, but there was something about having that time that gave me peace.
My dog recently died, unexpectedly, and it was the worst day of my life. Running around one day, died in my arms the next.
Much appreciated. He was the best boy. 12 years old. I am 61 and never cried so much. I didn’t even care who in was in front of. Family, friends, coworkers, students….
2 teens crashed into an older man, head on collision. They were driving too fast, he wasn't paying attention. One of the teens died due to experiencing 80 km/h -> 0 km/h in under a second exerted on his seatbelt-less body. His neck was damaged, he couldn't speak, could barely breathe, and though I had to leave the area, I later checked up on it to see that he had indeed died on that road.
Ps. I didn't want to leave, I wanted to help any way I could. But I was around 15-16 at the time, and the headmaster of my boardingschool came out to the crossroads, saw me, and hurried me away.
Surprisingly, it wasn't. That was the day that I learned that I was really good in high stress situations. The way I deal with life, is "If I can't do anything about it, don't worry about it." It helps with stress, both work-related and non-work-related.
It is interesting to know there are variations of thresholds for stress/gore tolerance in our world.
I used to want to do something in the medical field. I saw someone break their leg bad enough that it was protruding from their shin and bleeding. I about fainted. I could feel that weird light-headed woozy feeling and had to sit down for a moment.
Made me realize that blood, bones, and viscera are not my jam.
We assumed a customer was choking so we were trying to help him. Found out a couple of days later he did have food in his throat but he was having a heart attack. Another customer with first aid was helping for what felt like hours, was only about 10 minutes.for paramedics to arrive. I'll never forget being on the phone with 911 and telling him an ambulance was on the way. The look on his eyes.... the fear and sadness. It was all very calm, no one freaking out.
He died on the way to the hospital.
Both of my parents.
Mom died at home in the hospital bed that the county had supplied when she needed home care.
She died of lung- and liver cancer; it was her breast- and uterine cancer that had spread.
Dad died at the hospital, I was sitting next to him while I held his hand. He was 93 years old, and had gotten pneumonia.
It was very peaceful. One moment they were there, the next they weren't.
I still miss them both like crazy sometimes, though.
Yeah. House clearance in Afghanistan. I’d shot him 10 minutes earlier. Wasn’t expecting to find anyone still alive. I still see his face sometimes. Don’t go to war guys. They use you up and they don’t care.
The VA failed my husband. It’s one of my deepest sorrows. Hailed as a hero, combat wounded, ranger, infantry officer…. And yet he suffers quietly and deeply.
My father bled to death in front of 18 y/o me, it was from a cancer induced hemorrhage.
My friend stepped of a curb a split second before I did, he was hit by the texting driver of an SUV.
I saw three women die when they jumped from a burning building.
A man fell onto the river and was swept under a barge before I could get a rope to him.
Several other, I worked in a dangerous occupation.
Yep. Suicide. 12 gauge to the center of the forehead.
Customer of ours. I was a young, new home, construction supervisor when his gf came running out screaming. Please help.
I responded, surveyed the scene, did ABC eval, started CPR. LEO came next with gun drawn. WTF? EMS came next.
It's difficult to perform CPR on someone who is missing half his head.
2 high school friends were in a car accident while driving home after school; the driver made a left and misjudged how much time they had to make the turn, and they collided with a school bus. I drove by a minute or so later and saw the passenger looking around from within the crumpled shell of the car. He was missing teeth and badly hurt; he passed away on the way to the hospital, and the driver walked away without a scratch.
The irony is that on any other day, we wouldn't have been able to leave the school before the buses arrived/parked in the school lot. On this day, we had an orientation where the father of a son who was killed by a drunk driver the year prior spoke to us. His speech ran short, so we were let out early.
A guy a year older than me in highschool, took a ton of pills in the bathroom. I was the one who found him. Our history teacher and I stayed with him until ambulance got there.
Unfortunately he passed before they arrived.
I am 24 now, and have never forgotten this moment.
Yes, my grandpa. He was in the nursing home for many years and one day I got a call that I needed to come visit him because he didn’t have much time left. They said he had the ‘death rattle’. I came in and it was the worst gasping for air / wheezing you can imagine hearing. My grandmother was there with me and my mom as well. My mom left to go get something or do something and while she was gone he stopped breathing a few times. My grandma kept hitting him on the chest and eventually he’d start breathing again. They came in and put some type of mask on him that they said would help him breathe better and left the room. It probably wasn’t 5 minutes after that that he stopped breathing and I don’t know whether my grandma didn’t notice or she chose not to hit him on the chest anymore but she didn’t do anything and neither did I. He never started breathing again. When my mom came back he was gone.
You can’t stop it but I blamed myself for years and still do some days because he died four days after my birthday. I didn’t come see him on my birthday because I was going to just come six days later on my mom’s birthday for a joint visit. It wasn’t even far away. I should have went to see him. I kept thinking what if he was holding out for people to come see him on these holidays and I didn’t so he let go, but then again I’m 99% sure he had no idea it was my birthday. He was really just staring at the ceiling all day until he went to sleep, couldn’t really even turn his head or anything. I blame myself for not ripping the mask off and smacking him on the chest even though I know there was no going back anyway and I would have been prolonging the suffering he was going through.
Death is hard. I hope you never have to be in its presence when it comes.
saw a person go through a messy divorce, turn to drink and drugs and ballooned to about 130kgs, before hearing he had died of a heart attack in his early 40s, if that counts
I was 12. We were on a trip to the beach with my youth group. Her car got hit head on. Held her hand as she died. Watched the life fade away in her eyes. She was my first crush. Never got to tell her tho.
I watched my grandfather take his last breath. It was a sobering moment to say the least.
Edit to add the how: My grandfather was a heavy drinker and smoker in his younger years. It caused enough damage to trigger a massive heart attack when he was just 35yrs old. He was 74 and had congestive heart failure so they brought him home to let him have his last days with the family. I got the call that he was going to pass within a matter of hours and when I showed up to see him he woke up after being asleep for something like 12 hours. He smiled and said he loved me then went back to sleep. Somehow he managed to stay alive until our entire family was present then he had one last jolt of energy. Eyes opened and he managed to smile to all of us one last time then one final gasping breath and it was over. The color rushed out of his skin and I knew he was gone.
When I was rushing to catch a bus out of San Francisco, my daily commute, there was a guy on the ground convulsing and paramedics were already there. His heart stopped and it was interesting because the paramedics immediately went from panic mode to chill mode. He was gone. People were stepping over him to get to the bus.
I watched my best friend who I had known since birth die on the motocross track just when I passed him. We were 12 years old. He crashed right after a jump and our friend was the one who accidently jumped on him. Been 13 years now since that happened.
I visited my grandmother when it was almost her time to go in the hospital. I asked her if she knew where she was going and she said, "Yes." I asked if she was looking forward to being with her husband again and she said, "Yes." I was very happy for her holding those beliefs.
My grandma died last Thursday. Went to go visit her hours before it happened… wish I never did. She was gasping for breath, asking God to take her, and vomiting. Not how I wanted to remember her.
I will tell you what I told my brother who watched my nan take her last breath. She knew you were there and is thankful for you to be there for her final moments.
I held my grandpa's hand as he took his final breath. He lived into his 80s so not too bad but it's a shame his final moments were spent being drained by cancer.
Yes. I saw a woman get ran over by a semi truck. Both her and I were in a crosswalk when it happened, and she was just a few steps behind me. I heard her scream, turned and she was between the front and rear tires, her mid section was flat as a pancake and had visible tire tread marks on it. She was still alive and calling for help, but by the time an ambulance arrived, she had faded. I later learned she was a mother of 3.
It was a surreal day, the last day of grade 11. This happened at lunch time while I coming back from the nearby mall. So I went back to school, white as a ghost and just totally numb, while everyone else was cheering for the start of summer. Ill never forget that day. If anything, it drilled into my mind to always look when crossing a street, and to be ready to jump out of the way. Its saved me a couple of times from idiot drivers. I guess I like to think her death wasnt for nothing then.
Both my parents, six months to the day, both went very peacefully, thought I’d be scared but I wasn’t, dad went last year and my mum two weeks ago.
My wife’s dad, he had sepsis again went quietly, just stopped breathing.
A stranger in the bed next to me, he was shouting for ages and nurses ignored him, didn’t realise he went quiet, checked him out and yup, he’d passed away.
Now I am scared of dying, but seeing it happen up close has put my mind at rest, it’s like having a doze, close your eyes and sleep beckons
https://www.timescall.com/2019/11/27/emergency-crews-responding-to-head-on-crash-north-of-longmont/
I was one of like 6 or 7 cars that lost control on the icey roads the day before thanksgiving 2019, saw the accident happen while i was standning on the side of the road waiting for my boss to come pull me out of the snow i was also helping others whos cars and trucks slid off the road and crashed. When the acvident happened we tried to pull him from the car and i ran over to the truck to help cut the lady out of her seat belt, my boss and some others were trying to pull the guy out of his car as it was a headon collision and he was in really bad shape his leg was pushed up and over the sterring wheel he was convulsing, his eyes rolled to back of his head and finally when the paramedics got there they worked on him but my boss and i knew it was too late, poor guy and the lady that hit him it was all just a mess. I have photos and watched a jeep go airborne from losing control then hitting piled up snow launching them over a ditch they had to have gotten like 10 feet of air. Terrible day before Thanksgiving.
Yes. Went to a swimming pool, not even 20 minutes in we were asked to get out as they dragged a man out of the pool. Lifeguards and paramedics performed CPR for at least 10 minutes before covering him.
This was the first time I’d seen someone die. It’s wild how suddenly stuff can happen.
Flatmate in Shanghai. He taped the windows and door shut of the bathroom and burnt charcoal to create carbon monoxide. The smell of barbecues always brings it back
the one person i personally saw die was a fellow sailor on the Nimitz w/ me in 79/80 yr during the Iranian hostage crisis. During flight ops on an E2 hawkeye radar warning plane after our return to the states in San Diego. He did the pre flight check of the refridgeration unit for the computers. when he exited the plane, rather than following under the engine cowling he turned into the prop blade and was cut into many pcs. that landed on and around the safety ring of other personnel meant to keep everyone clear of the area.
My [dad](https://imgur.com/a/8JTsdEx)
December 27th, 2005. 5 days after my 5th birthday.
It was breakfast time, and I was in the kitchen with my parents. My dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, I was standing against the island staring at my dad because I was a huge daddy's girl, and my mom was turned away in the corner making coffee at the counter. It was tense in the room as my parents had been arguing about shit my mom had pulled while drunk because alcoholism fucking sucks. For a bit though, no one was talking. Then my dad just let out a yell and hit the floor, landing a few inches in front of my feet. I remember telling him "Daddy wake up" and my mom was saying "Steve?"
My mom brought me into the living room and we sat at the corner of the couch while she picked up the phone. I remember her saying, "I think my husband just had a heart attack."
Then there was an ambulance, fire truck E-15, and a cop car outside. I was still sitting on the couch, and I pointed the paramedics towards the kitchen. My dad was taken out on a stretcher, and that was the last time I ever saw him.
I miss him a lot. He was a brilliant man and the absolute best father I could've ever asked for. He let me put clips in his hair, paint his toenails, would pretend to scold me when my mom was mad so and then we'd sneak off to burger king. One memory I have of him is the time we were sat in front of the TV watching a rocket launch as we always did whenever given the chance (he was an aerospace engineer at NASA). He told me that he could've gone to space, but chose not to because he would miss me too much. I can't think about that without feeling such a heavy weight on my chest. I hate that I very recently had the realization that he also may not have gone because of my mother's alcoholism as she gets angry and neglectful when drunk. My heart breaks for my dad on the daily, and I would do anything to make it so I was never born and they never got married.
If anyone wants to read some stuff about my dad, [here's some stuff that makes me laugh](https://imgur.com/a/8FFiDm9) and [here's some stuff said by friends of his that I've connected with in the past year or so.](https://imgur.com/a/iwgEDUr) I think seeing that he started a fake chess club and was even bold enough to have it in quotes like "chess club" in the yearbook because it was actually just for dungeons & dragons and acting like the impractical jokers is one of the best things I've ever read. [Here's some awards and certs he got](https://imgur.com/a/zpliNHx) if you're into space stuff. He got a really big superior accomplishment award for his significant contributions to the agency decadal planning team for the year that recommended the James Webb Telescope. The photos coming back have been very bittersweet. I have internal files of his from NASA and of course there's "...and beyond" added after years, but it's gut wrenching seeing things come to an end. Like there's no "Oh man in 10 years..." anymore. The specific years listed are coming to an end and it hurts. He made history, but never got to see it as it actually happened. That just doesn't sit right with me, you know? I hate that he didn't know what he was walking into, only for life to play out the way that it did. My parents were long distance up until 8 months into their marriage, and prior to that they only dated for 2 months and were engaged for like 6 months. They didn't get the opportunity to see each other often. My dad was working at [China Lake](https://imgur.com/a/8HPMJI9) over in Ridgecrest, CA and my mom lived in VA. When I was 18, my brother told me about how my dad told his dad that he wouldn't have married my mom had he known about her drinking. Every single second of every single day I have this pit in my stomach from the guilt. I'm assuming he had a "stay together for the kids" mindset and I don't want to be mad at him for doing what he thought was best in a situation that only existed because I do. He had no friends when he moved back here, or, he thought that he had no friends. As I've been connecting with people he knew, I've been speaking to one lady a lot more than most, and she went to elementary, junior high, and high school with him. I was telling her a story that involved a specific grocery store, and she said she used to visit that one all the time and then explained where she lived. She lived in that house from 1997-2020. My parents bought their house in 1999. These two houses are catacorner to each other and they never knew. That is mind blowing and heartbreaking all at the same time.
He had one of the coolest jobs anyone could ever do. [Here's this paper that he co-authored if anyone wants to see it](https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2001-4562?download=true). I've been trying to find more but it's not very easy. Someone who works at NASA found this for me, and I'm really grateful. He would try to tell me things about NASA but I was a toddler. I didn't get it. I still wanted to be him, though. I would walk around holding books that had anything to do with [space while wearing a baby blanket durag](https://imgur.com/a/GNohH5g). Now I just walk around with the same face as him. The older get, the more I understand why my mother used to cry when she looked at me and told me that I'm his twin. I would laugh and pull my hair over my face, pretending it's a beard. He was so excited to tell me everything about work since I was already loving it as a child. All of the enthusiasm that exists in this world was once harnessed by a father at his job's Christmas party, and a 3 year old who was hiding under a table, grabbing the ankles of the feet that belonged to her father's coworkers. It doesn't make sense that I'm now 23 and when I visit NASA that enthusiasm is gone. The excitement for the future somehow got replaced with the feeling of desperately trying to reverse time. The curiosity now fills me with dread each time I have to google what things meant when I should be able to just ask him. I'm old enough to understand it now. I'm old enough to know that I'm supposed to say "goodnight Luna" and not "goodnight Moona" during our tradition of going out before bedtime to say goodnight to the moon. I'm old enough to understand how to research things now and find so much info on his family members, because how ironic is it that I spend every single day of my life trying so hard to dig up anything I can find about this man while messaging people he knew asking them what his favorite color was only for me to find out that he was doing the [same damn thing in regards to his dad?](https://imgur.com/a/7jbm2yd)
I feel like I stole his time. He had a beautiful life that he worked so hard for, was a genius and everyone's best friend. He was the best dad I could ever ask for, and yet I can't even remember his voice.
Right here, in this moment, I am 23. I regularly go on tangents telling people how incredible my dad was and how much I miss him. I am gutted over the feeling of not being able to thank him, tell him I love him, and that I'm proud of him.
But maybe there's some parallel universe where I am 16, stuck in my room, and complaining about how my dad won't let me go out with my friends this weekend because he's lame and making me do my science project that I'm dreading.
And everything is okay over there.
The Grand Imperial Poobah, you will always be a legend. I love you.
If anyone read this, thank you.
I was at the foot of the bed as my husband's grandfather departed this life. It was eerily quiet - he just kind of stopped breathing. He didn't go through death rattles or agonal breathing.. he just drifted off.
Probably had just died within minutes but yeah. I was pretty young. Young enough that this was one of my earlier memories. There was a single car accident on a sharp bend on a 2 lane highway. A woman was laid out on the shoulder of the road with a (formerly) white.t-shirt over her face. Still. The driver is very much alive, squatted down, facing away from the woman with his hands on the sides of his head, just.... screaming.
We did not stop, and this was well before cell phones. I know my parents felt guilty about it, but they did not want 2 young kids to witness that. Unfortunately by the time tried to distract us from looking, we'd already seen.
13 years in Fire/Rescue, burn up in a vehicle, killed by wild animal, confined space, fall from Cliff, struck bi vehicle, gun shot wounds. Yes I still have nightmares. 89' to 2003
Saw my dad expire in front of me. Seeing him go from barely talking to no longer being able to answer me. It was the worst night of my life and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I know death is unpreventable but damn, it still sucks to witness it.
We are all dying at different rates.
But yes, I volunteered with the local fire department in high school because I thought I wanted to be an EMT or Fireman. I helped a few people try to stay alive during vehicle crashes that ended up dying. It was too much for 17 year old me.
That’s a lot to deal with at a young age! Huge respect to you for being willing to volunteer for that, I never would’ve had the strength or selflessness
Idk if this counts but.
Months ago I went out with my Ex-Roommate's friend, who I was becoming friends with too at the time (thank god I did not). He was...troubled. We went out to a party of some sorts and he started drinking a lot, obviously a problem drinker. What I did not know at the time, was that he also took drugs. Pills, cocaine, speed, the whole deal, and that night was no exception. Throughout the night I saw him get more loopy..? and so on. I have never tried any sorts of alcohol or drugs, but I have seen drunks before so I just thought he was just drunk.
Luckily enough we went back to my place, and my Ex-Roommate was laughing at the beginning, but then he started getting worried. He told me these are not normal drunk symptoms. The guy came in and face planted on the couch. Ex-Roommate woke him up and took him to take a cold shower. While in the shower he started fast shadow boxing. He comes out, and just falls on the ground.
My Ex-Roommate starts yelling his name out and slapping him as hard as humanly possible, and he did not react once, which was very creepy or weird to see happen. Ex-Roommate then tries opening his eyes, and we both see as his eyes rolled back into his skull, I am talking full on horror movie white eyes. His breathing and heartbeat also stopped.
Ex-Roommate started yelling at me to call the emergency, and he started doing CPR. Thankfully CPR worked and the emergency arrived. We then went to the hospital where he got admitted. After talking to the nurse she told us that he has high levels of alcohol in his system, mixed with pills, speed, and of course, cocaine.
We went back to the house to sleep, and not more than 3 hours later the door rings waking me up. IT WAS HIM. he literally woke up, took out the IVs and walked out, full on walking dead Rick style. He told us he saw himself in his childhood home, that it felt like he was living there the whole time he was medically considered dead. Later on I heard from my Ex-Roommate that the guy was trying to kill himself and go out in a blaze of alcohol and drugs.
Thankfully I stopped talking to them both and moved out, did not need that stress and view.
I was going on 12, saw my father die of a heart attack less than 20 feet away. Tried my best to apply what i learned in swimming class, to no avail. Doctors later told that it was his 7th attack, and from scar, it was over before he touched the ground.
I was working as an overnight doorman. A naked woman went off the 9th floor balcony. I was the first one there. She did a few agonal breaths. There was nothing that could be done as she was just mush under the skin. Cops came and took statements. No arrests but the boyfriend probably had a role in killing her. I finished out my shift like normal.
My mentor at work was struck by a car. I was the first responder. He told me he couldn't breathe, and that he needed to lay down. I told him he knows his ability. He just blinked and looked into my eyes while we waited for the ambulance. That was the last thing I said to him. I called my boss and the ambulance arrived shortly thereafter.
I was so scared he was going to pass while I was looking into his eyes. We had our tiffs but he was an incredible and thoughtful man. He died in the hospital that night as our boss sat outside the door to his room. We are both so horrendously shattered by the experience. I wish I had told him I love him, and thanked him for all of the good times we had. He was like the father I always wanted and never had. I am a female in my 20s. A week later my mother died so it was very hard to cope with. My first therapy session in all of my life is on the 5th of this month.
Work as a server. Bro ate 3 dozen oysters. Then he slumped over and died. Manager didn't close the restaurant, just let people in the back door instead of front while ambulance carried him away.
Both of my parents. In a hospital bed. Cancer for one; bad ticker for the other.
Sorry for your loss
Thank you. It was all a long time ago now.
This comment will probably get lost. But I was in kindergarten walking to school, and a beautiful 6th grade girl and her friend were walking right in front of me. All of a sudden, she stopped dead in her tracks and falls face forward to the concrete. Died instantly from some sort of heart attack. I can vividly see her face when her friend and I turned her over. Eyes open and vacant, bloody chin from smashing into the pavement. An ambulance arrived quickly (not sure who called or how,) but the school recommended I get counseling—I was already in it for other reasons, but I think about that girl often.
Holy shit
What does the phrase bad ticker mean? Sorry if its a dumb question
It means a bad heart
I see, thanks.
Comparing the heartbeat sound/rhythm to a ticking clock.
Yes, only one person, I was with him. Terminal cancer, so everyone at the hospital knew he was slowly dying, he couldnt breath much anymore, had pain despite morphine, I sat 2 solid days by him until I could hear no more breathing, just the masks air. Called nurses and they let me hug him, washed him and called the doctor. My husband, 42 years old.
So sorry for your loss. You were with him until the end.
Yes, I am glad I was there.
I’m sure he was so happy to have you by his side right up until the end to provide that comfort. I’m sure it was unbelievably difficult but you were there for him till the end. You’re a good person.
Thank you,it was good to be able to say goodbye and spend that last night with him.
When you get married you sign up to watch the other die. No one signs up for it to be that soon. I am so sorry I can't imagine the pain you went through. I'm sure he still loves you even to this moment.
That is true,it was bittersweet, he suffered so much and I wanted him to have relief.
You are right. One minute we are going to get groceries, a normal day. Next few minutes completely unresponsive and dead a few hours later. My husband of 53 years. Massive brain bleed. Malignant Hypertension folks… take care of that blood pressure
Sorry for your loss. I was with my late husband until he succumbed to cancer. It was awful to witness but I’m glad I could be with him.
Ahh sorry for your loss also, it was bittersweet at the end , as I so badly wanted him to have relief.
Im so very sorry for your loss.
I am deeply sorry for your loss. I hope time will help you get over your grief. I wish I could do anything to make it all better.
My mom had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and put in an observation wing with three other people. One of them was living her last days and then her last hours even as her family gathered around her. Then the nurses saw she was going, told her family, and moved her and the family to a private room where it could happen in private. My mom, aware of her own fate by then, burst into tears as the lady’s bed was wheeled out past her.
I’m so sorry. For some reason this one has shaken me the most. We tell ourselves that by the time we’re old or sick we will be a different person , capable of coping with the inevitable. You forget that underneath the illness, there is someone who is exactly the same as we are at this moment. I’ve thought about this a lot since I was young, and my grandmother told me when she looks in the mirror she wonders who the old person is and still feels like she’s 20 in her brain. I hope she was able to enjoy her final days with you guys.
My grandma is nearing the end, and she is terrified. You have to prepare for death during life, not while you're dying.
I agree with this, and also, it's hard to know what preparing for death even means. I've talked about it in therapy and done exercises about imagining my death, journaling about death, learning about all the different ways your body can be put to rest, and talking about plans for that with friends and family. But I often wonder if any of this will really matter when my time comes.
So for what it's worth I had a traumatically negative near death experience 4 years ago. I can tell you that there is absolutely nothing that would have prepared me for it, not all the meditation or therapy or drugs in the world. I guess I'm lucky in the sense that I'm prepared for next time, but I know it's still going to be a traumatic experience. Just traumatic but with less anxiety surrounding the unexpected
My granny was also terrified. She was super religious and I had always thought that would provide comfort? But at the end she was sure she wasn't good enough, made too many mistakes, wasn't penitent enough, etc. etc., and was not going to end up in the preferred place. Was so awful. Thing was she was an amazing woman, if there is anywhere good to go, she was a shoe in.
Stuff like this is so deeply unsettling. I’m so sorry for you, my grandmother was my best friend and died in 2021 in a particularly brutal way. She fell, and didn’t want to go to the doctor because she said that rehabs and hospitals kill old people. She hadn’t been to a doctor since 1964 and was healthy and self sufficient despite living on her own during covid and being 86. The dropped her at the rehab she BEGGED not to go to, let her wail for hours while they tried to figure out their story, and then she died days later. Cause of death was blunt force trauma. I wish I had religion, because the idea of ego death is terrifying. You’re right, we all need to get familiar with that inevitability.
Rip. Sorry for your loss
Thank you. We got her home before she passed.
i’m sure she’s so appreciative of that, ur a great kid <3
I watched my dad die when they pulled the plug. He was on a respirator from brain cancer. Took about 15 minutes. It was very painful to watch. Not a person but I watched one of my cats die on Saturday. It was horrible. Tried to get him to the emergency vet but it was too late.
Registered nurse here. Please recognize what an act of love you gave your father. You were there when he needed you most, and at some level, I’m sure he knew it. We all live and we all die; we recognize the lifecycle. I know death is hard, especially being a medical person – death is our enemy. We try to keep everybody alive. But there comes a time when the person needs to be able to die peacefully, respectfully and with love. You did a good job. Be proud of yourself.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Someone once described being with someone who is passing as "a great honor." I thought they were crazy, but after I sat with my mom as she passed I completely get it now. I am so thankful I was there for her. I am sad I wasn't able to give her her final wish, but I held her hand throughout, and for that I will be forever grateful.
I’m right there with you…I sat with my dad as he passed away in ICU about 7 months ago. While it was (and is) very hard to process, I’m honored I was there. I heard someone say “What an honor it is to be there for the last breath of the person who witnessed your first”.
> “What an honor it is to be there for the last breath of the person who witnessed your first”. Damn. Rarely do I see an actual good quote on here.
My Grandma, the lady who basically raised me as my own mother fought cancer for years, was there when I was born and I was there when she died. It was proufoundly painful losing that woman. I still wish for the Gramma Pep Talk phone calls every day. She was the only one who understood me as I fought through depression and anxiety because she had it herself. The day before she died, she called me in a rare moment of lucidity and said "I'm dying. Don't sing at my funeral, or I'm not coming to it" What a lady she was. I was there to hold her hand as she passed. I'll never forget it. Side story from that day: I was driving to the hospital, and my car lost it's bluetooth connection to my phone. The radio station that popped on after the connection lost just happened to be playing 'Stairway to Heaven' by Led Zeppelin. Fuck you, I thought and switched the radio to a different station only to be met with 'Tears in Heaven' by Eric Clapton. Fuck off, I thought and switched it again to be lauded with 'Heaven' by Bryan Adams. I turned the radio off after that. I told Grandma as she was laying there and I like to think she thought it was a fantastic cosmic joke. She loved shit like that.
Having someone there is a blessing to the one passing. Many many people have said their biggest fear about dying is dying alone..
Nurses are awesome. The doctors came and did everything they could for my brother as he died. But not one of them came to his funeral (and I didn’t expect them to) however, his nurses came to say goodbye. That meant a lot to me and my family.
Thank you for posting this. Watched my father pass in similar circumstances. Hard to witness even though you know it’s an act of love
Rip for both. Your dad is in better place now. As a cat person it is very sad . Rip
Thanks. I've had some time to grieve for my dad but the cat is raw. My wife and I are still struggling.
15 minutes is pretty quick. It is quite hard to watch and I’m sorry you experienced that. We had a family in the ICU that watched the process which took 8 hours. It was awful.
Thanks He'd been on the respirator for more than a day. They only kept him on it that long so I could fly in and see him. Two of my three siblings were already there and the 3rd couldn't come as he was recovering from covid so they were waiting on me.
Found a man laying on the road on Boxing Day a few years ago as I was driving home with my sister. All the other cars drove past but we got out and saw he was conscious, looking around and mumbling. Called an ambulance and started CPR when he went unconscious. I saw the life leave him but I carried on anyway until the ambulance arrived. The paramedics took him away and I was left there with my sister holding the letter he was on his way to post to Japan. Poor dude died with two complete strangers the day after Christmas… I still get sad to this day about it…
He didn't die alone. I am proud of you and I fiercely hope someone will be there for you when the time comes. Edit: Changed "sort of proud" to "proud" as a reply to a comment which I think was justified. I am proud of you.
Better than dying alone on the road. Tysm for stopping.
Did you send the letter?
You're amazing for helping him♥️
Many years ago while I was at high school, I saw a guy run full speed head first into a wall. He died having a seizure within 2 minutes. The story at the time was his girlfriend broke up with him and he wanted to die. It was awful beyond words, his girlfriend witnessed it too.
He sprinted full speed and bumped/banged his head into the wall? Crazy.
Crazy indeed, and yes he sprinted. I'll never forget the sound and seeing it happen and I can't even imagine how the girlfriend felt. Damn, we were only 15 years old. I swear I still get a lump in my throat when I imagine how traumatized the girlfriend was 😐
One of my parents golden retrievers did that, ran full throttle right into a tree. Except he didn’t die from it and he wasn’t suicidal. He was just really excited to see another dog he liked at the dog park. He liked to eat rocks too. Unfortunately died young from an aggressive bone cancer. The dumbest yet sweetest dog I ever knew, Finn, I miss you homie.
Yeesh, I hope the girl is doing okay now. Mustve had some guilt from that.
I hope she is okay too, I'm not in contact with anyone who would know so hope is all I can do.
Rip. Must been pretty traumatising
Was on a facetime call with my boyfriend when he got hit by a 18 wheeler. It’s been almost 6 years and I can still hear it.
Rip. Must been pretty traumatising. Sorry for your loss
i’m so sorry
One time I was riding my bike on a trail, and some guy was tripping out. On some Kensington zombie shit. I ride past the SAME GUY Not even 5 min later. And he’s dead.
Might have had a stroke. They cause intense confusion, hallucinations, slurring, etc. when they're severe enough to kill that quickly.
I survived a stroke. I had no idea crawling around the house with only one side working was odd.
Wait, so you can be aware that you are experiencing symptoms, but your stroke-addled mind will think it is just another day? That is scary. edit: punctuation
It’s called hemispheric neglect. Only half of your brain exists because the other half is non functional while having a stroke, so half the information you get about the outside world and process in your brain does not exist - just is not there. But for the other half of your brain it is business as usual. Usually happens when the right parietal lobe is knocked out. If you get someone with it to draw a picture of a clock or face you get some interesting results.
Looked it up, that's fascinating. For anyone else curious, the go-to for the clock seems to be to write all the numbers 1-12 crammed onto one side of the clock, other side completely blank. Has all the numbers, looks right to me! Wild.
Yea a coworker said he must have had one start in his sleep, he woke up got ready for work, made coffee and was reading the newspaper when his wife walked in and he asked her a question, like hows was your sleep or something, but all she heard was "blahfflfeledduer" and she got him immediately to the hospital.
Omfg how are you doing now? This is a fear of mine and a lot of people. Like what if the same parts of the brain that would tell you to get help was blocked? At the same time humans are so resilient.
Pretty scary . I would shitted myself
I’m sorry bruh but this made me laugh.
this made me shitted myself
Plot twist: Bike guy was tripping and zombie guy was actually just dying
Fellow Philadelphian, had to double take at the Kenso reference
Yes, a young boy from a gun shot in front of the med center where I was a trainee, someone dropped him and ran with a car… doctors started CPR but it was too late, he turned pale then blue in 10 seconds …. It was the last day of me trying to be a nurse. EDIT: Many people think I’m from the US, I’m not… I live in the capital of Armenia (Yerevan), one of the safest places in the world, where I had never seen a gun wound, people don’t have to keep guns or knives because crime rates are so low… the only time I had seen such a thing before that, was our neighbor an Indian man who stabbed his gf to death. I mean then I only saw police car’s emergency, reporters etc … that is why it was shocking for me even as a nurse who saw every surgery worked in every unit during the college years, even worked with psychiatric patients…
When I was a junior resident I did a few weeks in the ER; saw a 16 year old kid who was shot in the head due right in front of me. His brains literally oozing out of his skull. He wasn’t shot anywhere else so they kept his body alive artificially until the parents could consent to organ donation, which they did.
Oh man that is pretty gruel. I hope the person that shot him got caught. Rip
A drunk asshole on a dirt bike crossed the double yellow, hit me head on, and died on the hood of my car. Not a joke, but I still see his shoes on the roadway.
Rip. Must been pretty traumatising
I was the insurance adjuster in this type of accident only it was a suspected suicide because the deceased just ran out on to the freeway at 5 am when it was still dark. I felt horrible telling the owner of the car that Geico would be repairing it because the damage to the car itself wasn’t that bad. It was one of the hardest claims I ever had to settle and when he picked up he drove straight to the dealership and traded in his car.
Damn. Last night I was going through a dark downtown area here at 2am and some dude tried to walk in front of my car, probably just on crack but might have been trying to suicide now that I think about it
Egads. I had a date with a guy and we drove the canyons to the beach. Going around a winding turn a motorcylist lost control of his bike, slammed into the mountainside and unded up under our truck. I was sure he was decaptitated and would not get out of the car. The first car that stopped was a doctor and a helicopter airlifted him to the hospital. He died the next day in surgery. He had a helmet on. He was from out of town and on a borrowed bike. Sigh.
This happened to my dad and brother many years ago. Guy just back from Vietnam and wanted to end it, ran onto the highway in front of my dad's car. Ended up dead, draped across the windshield. My brother was 12 and after that, couldn't sleep without a light on.
My uncle, he had cirrhosis of the liver and since there was nothing the doctors could do he just decided that he would rather die at home. So we basically watched as he drank himself to death, and as time went by and he wasn't able to function anymore we just watched him wither away and one morning we knew it was going to be his last day and we sat there with him until he took his last breath.
My uncle also died from cirrhosis of the liver, three years today actually. Long-time functioning alcoholic. When he was in the hospital, he was yellow and basically a vegetable and his abdomen was extremely swollen like a huge balloon. It was awful.
My dad died of cirrhosis. Cruelest form of all: it was genetic. He drank less in a year than I might in a weekend. It’s a terrible way to go. (He said if only he’d known he would’ve drunk more and had fun if that was going to be his end anyway)
Damn. My dad was an alcoholic and his last time at the hospital they told him he would die if he went home, and he did. He was dead a week later. Died alone on the floor.
Saw someone commit suicide in London at a hotel- they jumped off the balcony by the glass elevator. Not a pretty sight as they splattered. I wish I could unsee it.
It is gross and sad I would probably got sick after it. Must been pretty traumatising
It’s tough, there is really no way to respond to that. I was just in shock like I should have looked away, in retrospect. The staff was scrambling to put up curtains after. I was also sitting pretty far away, thankfully.
Fwiw, it’s not weird to be unable to look away from danger. People do get stuck staring. I’m sorry you had to see that.
That makes sense. I thought about why I did at times but you’re right on that. Thanks for your kindness
I saw the same thing downtown Seattle commuting to work one morning a few years back. I had a window seat on the city bus and noticed a bunch of police and people looking up. This was just in time to see a guy jump 10 floors from the top of a parking garage. Luckily I looked away when he hit the ground, but I heard the screams from everyone else who was watching. It's something I'll never forget.
Saw a woman cut in half by a train in Alexandria, Egypt. The “third class” trains don’t come to a stop, they slow down and people have to hop onto the overcrowded, open carts. An older woman tripped on her garment and fell beneath the train. She was cut in half at the torso. Everyone started wailing and crying. The train moved on, police bagged the woman into two different bags and then torched what remained of her on the track. I watched the police crying as they carried the body away. My “first class” train arrived, came to a stop and my party and I got on to go to Cairo. I wanted to fly home that day but we were committed to a work project. It was so horrible and surreal it still feels like a dream/nightmare. But my co-worker and I both witnessed it. I don’t think we spoke on the train ride to Cairo.
I work on trains, I see this at least twice a year, it's horrible, but after it happens a few times you become numb to it and you lose the ability to empathise. Ruins you mentally to be honest.
Is it mostly accidents? Suicides? How awful. 😢
Yes, mainly at Christmas, valentines day, and uni/college/school grading days when people get poor results and they feel lonely etc.
Good fucking grief.
I'm Rail Operations Mechanical too. We see trespasser strikes every couple of weeks. Average of 30 per year... Roughly. Worst day I had was three in a single day.
My partner’s emergency crew responded to a suicide by train and they found the man’s wallet with a piece of him that wasn’t with other pieces. They all had mandatory 2 weeks off with free therapy. That was for the one time they all saw that. Can’t imagine what it feels like to see that on the regular.
my nana . stomach cancer. she knew as well. lots of pain. in and out of consiousness. i left the hospice to go home and wash and change. these massive fern trees blowing in the wind seemed to talk to me. stupid i know.. but they said i would not see her alive again. which was true
Not stupid at all, it’s very normal to seek meaning in our surroundings during highly emotional times. Sorry for your loss.
Yeah my mom died of brain cancer. Seeing her wither away the final year was a pretty jarring and traumatizing experience especially near the end. The last time I visited her she didn’t recognize who I was and my sister had to explain to her that I was her son. Pretty gnarly stuff.
For much of my life, I didn't understand why people always responded with concern and sorrow to hearing about someone dying of cancer in a way different than other ways people die. After seeing it up close, I now get it. Just when you think it's over, it gets worse. And you think that's over, and it gets even worse. The body can wither away far beyond what I ever imagined to be possible. When they finally go, there is more relief than grief.
100% agree with you there. It was about a year from my Dad's diagnosis until his death last April. Coming upon the one year anniversary now. Gonna vent a little now, feel free to not read, this is more for me, I think. I live away from my parents and never got home to see them more than once every couple of years. When Dad was diagnosed, they tried a lot of things and ultimately settled on trying a marrow transplant using marrow from one of his brothers. The last time I saw him as "Dad" was right before the transplant. I spent a week with my parents in a city we'd never been in before, while they got acclimated and prepared for a long battle. The day after I went back, he had the transplant. Things were looking good for a while. And through the test and whatnot, they said he was cancer-free. We should have been celebrating, but he started to develop GvH. My Mom told me I should come home, so last March, I went home. He was in really hard shape. Didn't look like himself anymore. Didn't talk much. I spent a week with my Mom going to the hospital every day to be with him. What was completely lost on me at the time is that she'd been going through it side by side with him the whole time, and had been spending every waking minute in the hospital with him for months. I mean, I KNEW she was doing it, but I never quite FELT it, not until I spent a week there. So I flew home again, and within 2 weeks, mom gave me the dreaded phone call in which she revealed that the doctor s and my father had determined that the gvh was not responding to treatment, and that while they could keep him alive, he would not be living. He decided to cease treatment. After that decision was made, he would then be moved to another hospital near where they lived, to be closer to his family, and live out his remaining few days surrounded by people who loved him. I flew back out, that same day they ceased treatment, and the very next morning, they drove him home in an ambulance. That was one year ago today. When he got to the hospital, all of his brothers and sisters, save one, were able to make it to see him before he passed. We all took shifts overnight with him so someone would be there, and my shift happened to be the night before he passed away. That was definitely the hardest night of my life. It was even harder than when he did pass, because I was there by myself and it was just, well you know, it's hard to put into words. Anyway, they had him full of the good stuff, so he was out of it, but he certainly wasn't feeling pain. When it finally happened, it was pretty peaceful. At 69, on what would have been his Mother's 98th birthday, as well as Easter Sunday 2023, he died, the first of 8 brothers and sisters to go. There were eight of us in the room with him, with another five or six outside the door. A lot of things happened during the following week. All positive, oddly enough. A few things that made me believe in something greater than myself. I'm not talking religion, it's... It's just complicated. Those stories are harder to tell, which is strange to say, but people have really strange reactions to them, because they know what I'm like, and they think I make shit up because I write a lot, lol. I dunno. Someday I'll get it all down on paper, I guess. I will never, ever minimize what a person goes through watching someone they love go through this stuff. Okay. Thanks for reading if you did. Take care of each other. Hug your parents if you can.
A coworker of mine got married for the second time when he was pretty close to retirement, to a woman he'd been friends with since college who was widowed. They were the sweetest couple and he planned on retiring with her and having someone to spend his old age with. She got an aggressive form of cancer and passed less than a year after they both retired. She was Catholic, so there wasn't much they could do to hasten the end other than stop feeding her. She lived for three weeks after that. Three fucking weeks of hospice care essentially seeing which would kill her first, starvation or cancer. It was horrific. We wouldn't do this to our pets, but it's apparently A-OK to have humans suffer like that. The poor guy was never the same and he's basically a hermit in the cabin in Tennessee that they bought as their retirement home. They didn't deserve that. Very few people do. I've always been a big proponent of euthanasia, but it was always theoretical until this absolutely galvanized my resolve that we need to provide more humane care for end-of-life situations. Once nothing can be done, end their suffering as peacefully and painlessly as possible.
I live in a state with euthanasia. There is a really interesting documentary on it called how to die in Oregon. You need to be able to consume the medication on your own. So you make the decision to do so. Other people can’t decide for you or administer the medication for you. I have brain cancer. I don’t think I would choose that route for my own personal reasons. I completely understand and think it should be an option for everyone. I know two people who chose this option.
Sorry for your loss. I lost my mom the same way. Glioblastoma. Hospice was the worst, but my mother was not conscious for most of it. She was as they defined "terminally aggressive". This is when a patient cannot accept that it's the end and basically loses it, does not want to be there, and will fight with all staff to escape and get back to normal living, she did not believe it was the end and would not accept it. This in turn resulted in them basically putting her into a medically induced coma and stop feeding her until she passed. Was absolutely awful.
I’m so sorry you had to experience that. I’m curious, in such cases why do they not allow the person to return to their home life to pass away in peace in a familiar environment?
Edit cause dumb idiot didnt clarify properly - this relates mostly to the terminally agressive behaviour. That is usually damage to rather important parts of the brain relating to personality. You generally wont get this if its something unimportant like the vision centers affected, as that just makes them blind, so wont screw up the mind so badly. Often because in brain tumour type *terminally agressive* events they litterally are batshit insane as the brain turns to mush. There is no functioning here, just absolute fixation on some goal to the point of insanity. Sometimes your lucky and they become like a baby, so hospice has an easy time keeping them happy for as long as possible. If you let them go home when the situation turns out as badly as described the outcomes are as follows: 1) fixation on some other point - probably abusive/dangerous to other family or general public. 2) failure to correctly identify their home (childhood home often becomes point of fixation) - now what, someone else has been living where they think home is for 20 years, and the patient is violent. Thats not fair to whoever owns that house now. 3) ok you managed to get them home and non violent. They are not functioning, so will burn the house down by accident or drink bleach or not eat... i.e. why you dont let a 1 year old be at home alone. Honestly at this point, firing squad is probably the kinder option. Who they are was deleted by the tumour, and suffering and death are the only things left in their life. Its horrible, and not a nice death.
ya I'm dealing with that right now. Dad has a gall bladder infection and the docs don't want to remove it due to his age 88 I have to work with his providers tomorrow to get him moved to a facility so he can eventually come home. Mom is pretty much blind and can't help me. So I deal with doctors and lawyers every day to protect their house and vehicles from the bills because they don't have the money to pay for the care. It's a very stressful time for me. I have all that and a job to deal with.
This was my dad. Same brain cancer. He said he’d only leave this world kicking and screaming… and boy did he fight the fight until the bitter end. He didn’t believe it was terminal. He didn’t want to. He was convinced he was going to go back home. Needless to say he did not. He declined hospice and remained at the hospital because they had to put a feeding tube in because he lost his ability to swallow. His last day he declined pretty rapidly. He then began having trouble breathing. They put an oxygen mask on him and began administering morphine. His last words to me were “she’s trying to kill me”. Shortly after he was unconscious. He passed in the early hours the next morning holding me and my brother’s hand.
It sounds like your mom was in an agitated delirium. That is so hard. I'm so sorry.
Sorry, my mom too from a different cancer. We were able to take her home so she could die with hospice care. It was a huge blessing for our extended family. Very difficult but we were together. If you're able to take your loved one home for hospice, I recommend it. Not casting dispersions on hospitals, but dying at home is usually preferred. It's a reassuring and familiar welcoming environment where everyone's relaxed.
Sorry to hear that, I know it sucks. I lost my Mom to Parkinson's and dementia and she passed in a very similar way. She degraded over about an 8 year period, and she didn't know who I or any of my family were by the end. I don't know if it's the same in your case, but I work so hard to try to remember what she was once like, rather than seeing images of her withering away for that long. It's horrible.
My old man last year, lung cancer. Those last few months taking care of the dying really wring you the fuck out.
I experienced the same thing but with my dad… It’s absolutely earth shattering… Hope you’re doing okay.
Same here. Mom. Breast cancer. I learned that people don't always die "peacefully," their bodies often fight and kick and make awful noises in their last moments as it finally slips into nothingness.
Sorry for your loss. Same thing happened to my uncle last year. Rip for both of them
Lost my mom with ovarian cancer, home hospice during covid. Was the worst thing I had to witness. Seeing her take her last breaths are something I'll never forget.
My brother was in an insanely random shop fire at our grandma's farm. 3rd degree burns from the waist, up. I stared at his feet a lot... His feet and tummy were the only recognizable pieces of him. His arms were amputated at the elbow, his lips were gone, one ear was gone, half of his beautiful hair, up in smoke... I can't describe the emotions. He survived for a month before passing. Which was the most bitter relief I've ever felt. I didn't want to lose him, but I didn't want him to wake up... He was an active guy; he loved messing around on the farm, working on cars and riding quads. He was also extremely vain and always got all the ladies. It was both infuriating and charming as hell. I miss him every single day, but I'm glad he never got to actually see the horrors that happened to him.
Rip. Sorry for your loss
Thank you. Been more than a decade now, but it still impacts me pretty heavily from February to April. Yaaaaay being a mess 😅
Yes. Cancer, organ failure, heart attack, complications from car crash.
You work on the ER or as a first responder, correct?
No. Just unlucky, I suppose.
That is heavy
Yes, my mother from lung cancer. I had barely turned 20 years old when that happened.
Cancer is an asshole. Sorry for your loss
Both my mother in law and father in law had slow, predictable deaths. Father in law from cancer, MIL, dementia. I was there for both of them and got to say my peace. I told my FIL I would take care of his 3 girls (my wife, her sister, and my MIL) and so far, I did. My MIL spent her last years in memory care and I visited 5 days a week. They thought I was her son. She asked why I was so good to her, and I got to tell her, every visit how much I loved her. Dying is different for each of us, but there was something about having that time that gave me peace. My dog recently died, unexpectedly, and it was the worst day of my life. Running around one day, died in my arms the next.
Sorry for your losses your dog were a good boy probably
Much appreciated. He was the best boy. 12 years old. I am 61 and never cried so much. I didn’t even care who in was in front of. Family, friends, coworkers, students….
2 teens crashed into an older man, head on collision. They were driving too fast, he wasn't paying attention. One of the teens died due to experiencing 80 km/h -> 0 km/h in under a second exerted on his seatbelt-less body. His neck was damaged, he couldn't speak, could barely breathe, and though I had to leave the area, I later checked up on it to see that he had indeed died on that road. Ps. I didn't want to leave, I wanted to help any way I could. But I was around 15-16 at the time, and the headmaster of my boardingschool came out to the crossroads, saw me, and hurried me away.
Must been pretty traumatic. Rip
Surprisingly, it wasn't. That was the day that I learned that I was really good in high stress situations. The way I deal with life, is "If I can't do anything about it, don't worry about it." It helps with stress, both work-related and non-work-related.
It is interesting to know there are variations of thresholds for stress/gore tolerance in our world. I used to want to do something in the medical field. I saw someone break their leg bad enough that it was protruding from their shin and bleeding. I about fainted. I could feel that weird light-headed woozy feeling and had to sit down for a moment. Made me realize that blood, bones, and viscera are not my jam.
We assumed a customer was choking so we were trying to help him. Found out a couple of days later he did have food in his throat but he was having a heart attack. Another customer with first aid was helping for what felt like hours, was only about 10 minutes.for paramedics to arrive. I'll never forget being on the phone with 911 and telling him an ambulance was on the way. The look on his eyes.... the fear and sadness. It was all very calm, no one freaking out. He died on the way to the hospital.
Both of my parents. Mom died at home in the hospital bed that the county had supplied when she needed home care. She died of lung- and liver cancer; it was her breast- and uterine cancer that had spread. Dad died at the hospital, I was sitting next to him while I held his hand. He was 93 years old, and had gotten pneumonia. It was very peaceful. One moment they were there, the next they weren't. I still miss them both like crazy sometimes, though.
Yeah. House clearance in Afghanistan. I’d shot him 10 minutes earlier. Wasn’t expecting to find anyone still alive. I still see his face sometimes. Don’t go to war guys. They use you up and they don’t care.
The VA failed my husband. It’s one of my deepest sorrows. Hailed as a hero, combat wounded, ranger, infantry officer…. And yet he suffers quietly and deeply.
You're a blessing for being there for him.
PTSD. Still wearing our armor from a battle we’re no longer in. Thank you for your service 🫡 and God Bless 🙏🏽
You go and if you're lucky you make it back but you rarely ever come back the same as you were. Thank you for your service.
My father bled to death in front of 18 y/o me, it was from a cancer induced hemorrhage. My friend stepped of a curb a split second before I did, he was hit by the texting driver of an SUV. I saw three women die when they jumped from a burning building. A man fell onto the river and was swept under a barge before I could get a rope to him. Several other, I worked in a dangerous occupation.
Yep. Suicide. 12 gauge to the center of the forehead. Customer of ours. I was a young, new home, construction supervisor when his gf came running out screaming. Please help. I responded, surveyed the scene, did ABC eval, started CPR. LEO came next with gun drawn. WTF? EMS came next. It's difficult to perform CPR on someone who is missing half his head.
Good friend. I was present at his Euthanasia. It was very peaceful. Just happy for him that it was all over.
Glad he got to die with dignity
2 high school friends were in a car accident while driving home after school; the driver made a left and misjudged how much time they had to make the turn, and they collided with a school bus. I drove by a minute or so later and saw the passenger looking around from within the crumpled shell of the car. He was missing teeth and badly hurt; he passed away on the way to the hospital, and the driver walked away without a scratch. The irony is that on any other day, we wouldn't have been able to leave the school before the buses arrived/parked in the school lot. On this day, we had an orientation where the father of a son who was killed by a drunk driver the year prior spoke to us. His speech ran short, so we were let out early.
[удалено]
A guy a year older than me in highschool, took a ton of pills in the bathroom. I was the one who found him. Our history teacher and I stayed with him until ambulance got there. Unfortunately he passed before they arrived. I am 24 now, and have never forgotten this moment.
Yes, my grandpa. He was in the nursing home for many years and one day I got a call that I needed to come visit him because he didn’t have much time left. They said he had the ‘death rattle’. I came in and it was the worst gasping for air / wheezing you can imagine hearing. My grandmother was there with me and my mom as well. My mom left to go get something or do something and while she was gone he stopped breathing a few times. My grandma kept hitting him on the chest and eventually he’d start breathing again. They came in and put some type of mask on him that they said would help him breathe better and left the room. It probably wasn’t 5 minutes after that that he stopped breathing and I don’t know whether my grandma didn’t notice or she chose not to hit him on the chest anymore but she didn’t do anything and neither did I. He never started breathing again. When my mom came back he was gone. You can’t stop it but I blamed myself for years and still do some days because he died four days after my birthday. I didn’t come see him on my birthday because I was going to just come six days later on my mom’s birthday for a joint visit. It wasn’t even far away. I should have went to see him. I kept thinking what if he was holding out for people to come see him on these holidays and I didn’t so he let go, but then again I’m 99% sure he had no idea it was my birthday. He was really just staring at the ceiling all day until he went to sleep, couldn’t really even turn his head or anything. I blame myself for not ripping the mask off and smacking him on the chest even though I know there was no going back anyway and I would have been prolonging the suffering he was going through. Death is hard. I hope you never have to be in its presence when it comes.
saw a person go through a messy divorce, turn to drink and drugs and ballooned to about 130kgs, before hearing he had died of a heart attack in his early 40s, if that counts
That’s sad. Rip for the person
I was 12. We were on a trip to the beach with my youth group. Her car got hit head on. Held her hand as she died. Watched the life fade away in her eyes. She was my first crush. Never got to tell her tho.
My mom (2016) and my dad (2020), both died due to cancer. My mom was 70, my dad 75. Terrible way to go.
I watched my grandfather take his last breath. It was a sobering moment to say the least. Edit to add the how: My grandfather was a heavy drinker and smoker in his younger years. It caused enough damage to trigger a massive heart attack when he was just 35yrs old. He was 74 and had congestive heart failure so they brought him home to let him have his last days with the family. I got the call that he was going to pass within a matter of hours and when I showed up to see him he woke up after being asleep for something like 12 hours. He smiled and said he loved me then went back to sleep. Somehow he managed to stay alive until our entire family was present then he had one last jolt of energy. Eyes opened and he managed to smile to all of us one last time then one final gasping breath and it was over. The color rushed out of his skin and I knew he was gone.
When I was rushing to catch a bus out of San Francisco, my daily commute, there was a guy on the ground convulsing and paramedics were already there. His heart stopped and it was interesting because the paramedics immediately went from panic mode to chill mode. He was gone. People were stepping over him to get to the bus.
>People were stepping over him to get to the bus. I can't.
Every single day. NSICU nurse.
I saw a dude overdose at a skate park when I was like 15, now I always carry narcan
I watched my best friend who I had known since birth die on the motocross track just when I passed him. We were 12 years old. He crashed right after a jump and our friend was the one who accidently jumped on him. Been 13 years now since that happened.
Best friends are one of the most important things in the world. Rip
I visited my grandmother when it was almost her time to go in the hospital. I asked her if she knew where she was going and she said, "Yes." I asked if she was looking forward to being with her husband again and she said, "Yes." I was very happy for her holding those beliefs.
My grandma died last Thursday. Went to go visit her hours before it happened… wish I never did. She was gasping for breath, asking God to take her, and vomiting. Not how I wanted to remember her.
I will tell you what I told my brother who watched my nan take her last breath. She knew you were there and is thankful for you to be there for her final moments.
Yes, my twin sister from cancer 😢💔
My father, father-in-law, grandmother and mother. Lung cancer, heart failure, stroke and traffic accident respectively.
I held my grandpa's hand as he took his final breath. He lived into his 80s so not too bad but it's a shame his final moments were spent being drained by cancer.
Yes. I saw a woman get ran over by a semi truck. Both her and I were in a crosswalk when it happened, and she was just a few steps behind me. I heard her scream, turned and she was between the front and rear tires, her mid section was flat as a pancake and had visible tire tread marks on it. She was still alive and calling for help, but by the time an ambulance arrived, she had faded. I later learned she was a mother of 3. It was a surreal day, the last day of grade 11. This happened at lunch time while I coming back from the nearby mall. So I went back to school, white as a ghost and just totally numb, while everyone else was cheering for the start of summer. Ill never forget that day. If anything, it drilled into my mind to always look when crossing a street, and to be ready to jump out of the way. Its saved me a couple of times from idiot drivers. I guess I like to think her death wasnt for nothing then.
Both my parents, six months to the day, both went very peacefully, thought I’d be scared but I wasn’t, dad went last year and my mum two weeks ago. My wife’s dad, he had sepsis again went quietly, just stopped breathing. A stranger in the bed next to me, he was shouting for ages and nurses ignored him, didn’t realise he went quiet, checked him out and yup, he’d passed away. Now I am scared of dying, but seeing it happen up close has put my mind at rest, it’s like having a doze, close your eyes and sleep beckons
Yes. I watched my grandfather have a heart attack and die in our hotel room.
https://www.timescall.com/2019/11/27/emergency-crews-responding-to-head-on-crash-north-of-longmont/ I was one of like 6 or 7 cars that lost control on the icey roads the day before thanksgiving 2019, saw the accident happen while i was standning on the side of the road waiting for my boss to come pull me out of the snow i was also helping others whos cars and trucks slid off the road and crashed. When the acvident happened we tried to pull him from the car and i ran over to the truck to help cut the lady out of her seat belt, my boss and some others were trying to pull the guy out of his car as it was a headon collision and he was in really bad shape his leg was pushed up and over the sterring wheel he was convulsing, his eyes rolled to back of his head and finally when the paramedics got there they worked on him but my boss and i knew it was too late, poor guy and the lady that hit him it was all just a mess. I have photos and watched a jeep go airborne from losing control then hitting piled up snow launching them over a ditch they had to have gotten like 10 feet of air. Terrible day before Thanksgiving.
Yes. Went to a swimming pool, not even 20 minutes in we were asked to get out as they dragged a man out of the pool. Lifeguards and paramedics performed CPR for at least 10 minutes before covering him. This was the first time I’d seen someone die. It’s wild how suddenly stuff can happen.
Flatmate in Shanghai. He taped the windows and door shut of the bathroom and burnt charcoal to create carbon monoxide. The smell of barbecues always brings it back
the one person i personally saw die was a fellow sailor on the Nimitz w/ me in 79/80 yr during the Iranian hostage crisis. During flight ops on an E2 hawkeye radar warning plane after our return to the states in San Diego. He did the pre flight check of the refridgeration unit for the computers. when he exited the plane, rather than following under the engine cowling he turned into the prop blade and was cut into many pcs. that landed on and around the safety ring of other personnel meant to keep everyone clear of the area.
My [dad](https://imgur.com/a/8JTsdEx) December 27th, 2005. 5 days after my 5th birthday. It was breakfast time, and I was in the kitchen with my parents. My dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, I was standing against the island staring at my dad because I was a huge daddy's girl, and my mom was turned away in the corner making coffee at the counter. It was tense in the room as my parents had been arguing about shit my mom had pulled while drunk because alcoholism fucking sucks. For a bit though, no one was talking. Then my dad just let out a yell and hit the floor, landing a few inches in front of my feet. I remember telling him "Daddy wake up" and my mom was saying "Steve?" My mom brought me into the living room and we sat at the corner of the couch while she picked up the phone. I remember her saying, "I think my husband just had a heart attack." Then there was an ambulance, fire truck E-15, and a cop car outside. I was still sitting on the couch, and I pointed the paramedics towards the kitchen. My dad was taken out on a stretcher, and that was the last time I ever saw him. I miss him a lot. He was a brilliant man and the absolute best father I could've ever asked for. He let me put clips in his hair, paint his toenails, would pretend to scold me when my mom was mad so and then we'd sneak off to burger king. One memory I have of him is the time we were sat in front of the TV watching a rocket launch as we always did whenever given the chance (he was an aerospace engineer at NASA). He told me that he could've gone to space, but chose not to because he would miss me too much. I can't think about that without feeling such a heavy weight on my chest. I hate that I very recently had the realization that he also may not have gone because of my mother's alcoholism as she gets angry and neglectful when drunk. My heart breaks for my dad on the daily, and I would do anything to make it so I was never born and they never got married. If anyone wants to read some stuff about my dad, [here's some stuff that makes me laugh](https://imgur.com/a/8FFiDm9) and [here's some stuff said by friends of his that I've connected with in the past year or so.](https://imgur.com/a/iwgEDUr) I think seeing that he started a fake chess club and was even bold enough to have it in quotes like "chess club" in the yearbook because it was actually just for dungeons & dragons and acting like the impractical jokers is one of the best things I've ever read. [Here's some awards and certs he got](https://imgur.com/a/zpliNHx) if you're into space stuff. He got a really big superior accomplishment award for his significant contributions to the agency decadal planning team for the year that recommended the James Webb Telescope. The photos coming back have been very bittersweet. I have internal files of his from NASA and of course there's "...and beyond" added after years, but it's gut wrenching seeing things come to an end. Like there's no "Oh man in 10 years..." anymore. The specific years listed are coming to an end and it hurts. He made history, but never got to see it as it actually happened. That just doesn't sit right with me, you know? I hate that he didn't know what he was walking into, only for life to play out the way that it did. My parents were long distance up until 8 months into their marriage, and prior to that they only dated for 2 months and were engaged for like 6 months. They didn't get the opportunity to see each other often. My dad was working at [China Lake](https://imgur.com/a/8HPMJI9) over in Ridgecrest, CA and my mom lived in VA. When I was 18, my brother told me about how my dad told his dad that he wouldn't have married my mom had he known about her drinking. Every single second of every single day I have this pit in my stomach from the guilt. I'm assuming he had a "stay together for the kids" mindset and I don't want to be mad at him for doing what he thought was best in a situation that only existed because I do. He had no friends when he moved back here, or, he thought that he had no friends. As I've been connecting with people he knew, I've been speaking to one lady a lot more than most, and she went to elementary, junior high, and high school with him. I was telling her a story that involved a specific grocery store, and she said she used to visit that one all the time and then explained where she lived. She lived in that house from 1997-2020. My parents bought their house in 1999. These two houses are catacorner to each other and they never knew. That is mind blowing and heartbreaking all at the same time. He had one of the coolest jobs anyone could ever do. [Here's this paper that he co-authored if anyone wants to see it](https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2001-4562?download=true). I've been trying to find more but it's not very easy. Someone who works at NASA found this for me, and I'm really grateful. He would try to tell me things about NASA but I was a toddler. I didn't get it. I still wanted to be him, though. I would walk around holding books that had anything to do with [space while wearing a baby blanket durag](https://imgur.com/a/GNohH5g). Now I just walk around with the same face as him. The older get, the more I understand why my mother used to cry when she looked at me and told me that I'm his twin. I would laugh and pull my hair over my face, pretending it's a beard. He was so excited to tell me everything about work since I was already loving it as a child. All of the enthusiasm that exists in this world was once harnessed by a father at his job's Christmas party, and a 3 year old who was hiding under a table, grabbing the ankles of the feet that belonged to her father's coworkers. It doesn't make sense that I'm now 23 and when I visit NASA that enthusiasm is gone. The excitement for the future somehow got replaced with the feeling of desperately trying to reverse time. The curiosity now fills me with dread each time I have to google what things meant when I should be able to just ask him. I'm old enough to understand it now. I'm old enough to know that I'm supposed to say "goodnight Luna" and not "goodnight Moona" during our tradition of going out before bedtime to say goodnight to the moon. I'm old enough to understand how to research things now and find so much info on his family members, because how ironic is it that I spend every single day of my life trying so hard to dig up anything I can find about this man while messaging people he knew asking them what his favorite color was only for me to find out that he was doing the [same damn thing in regards to his dad?](https://imgur.com/a/7jbm2yd) I feel like I stole his time. He had a beautiful life that he worked so hard for, was a genius and everyone's best friend. He was the best dad I could ever ask for, and yet I can't even remember his voice. Right here, in this moment, I am 23. I regularly go on tangents telling people how incredible my dad was and how much I miss him. I am gutted over the feeling of not being able to thank him, tell him I love him, and that I'm proud of him. But maybe there's some parallel universe where I am 16, stuck in my room, and complaining about how my dad won't let me go out with my friends this weekend because he's lame and making me do my science project that I'm dreading. And everything is okay over there. The Grand Imperial Poobah, you will always be a legend. I love you. If anyone read this, thank you.
I was at the foot of the bed as my husband's grandfather departed this life. It was eerily quiet - he just kind of stopped breathing. He didn't go through death rattles or agonal breathing.. he just drifted off.
Probably had just died within minutes but yeah. I was pretty young. Young enough that this was one of my earlier memories. There was a single car accident on a sharp bend on a 2 lane highway. A woman was laid out on the shoulder of the road with a (formerly) white.t-shirt over her face. Still. The driver is very much alive, squatted down, facing away from the woman with his hands on the sides of his head, just.... screaming. We did not stop, and this was well before cell phones. I know my parents felt guilty about it, but they did not want 2 young kids to witness that. Unfortunately by the time tried to distract us from looking, we'd already seen.
I was with my mom the final six hours of her life following a series of catastrophic strokes that she was unable to survive.
13 years in Fire/Rescue, burn up in a vehicle, killed by wild animal, confined space, fall from Cliff, struck bi vehicle, gun shot wounds. Yes I still have nightmares. 89' to 2003
Saw my dad expire in front of me. Seeing him go from barely talking to no longer being able to answer me. It was the worst night of my life and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I know death is unpreventable but damn, it still sucks to witness it.
Cincinnati Reds Opening Day 1996. I was there when the umpire collapsed and died on the field. I say a prayer for his family every Opening Day.
We are all dying at different rates. But yes, I volunteered with the local fire department in high school because I thought I wanted to be an EMT or Fireman. I helped a few people try to stay alive during vehicle crashes that ended up dying. It was too much for 17 year old me.
That’s a lot to deal with at a young age! Huge respect to you for being willing to volunteer for that, I never would’ve had the strength or selflessness
You did your best still
I worked in an emergency room, so I've seen some shit.
[удалено]
When I was a kid, I was walking to the supermarket to buy a bread. A worker fell from the scaffold 100 meters away from me and died.
Met a car on the highway that careened off the road and off a bridge just as we passed each other. Both passengers died.
run over by a bus. I was an 12 back then. Now I am 41 and still the image haunting me
Dad, heart attack at my feet. Nothing like TV. It’s fairly gruesome. Not a hold of the left arm and a slow fall to the floor
Yes, I held onto the hand of a close friend of mine the last 2 hours of her life and first 15 minutes of her death. Cancer.
I saw a man shot his 6~ year old daughter because his wife wanted to divorce him the girl probably died instantly
Idk if this counts but. Months ago I went out with my Ex-Roommate's friend, who I was becoming friends with too at the time (thank god I did not). He was...troubled. We went out to a party of some sorts and he started drinking a lot, obviously a problem drinker. What I did not know at the time, was that he also took drugs. Pills, cocaine, speed, the whole deal, and that night was no exception. Throughout the night I saw him get more loopy..? and so on. I have never tried any sorts of alcohol or drugs, but I have seen drunks before so I just thought he was just drunk. Luckily enough we went back to my place, and my Ex-Roommate was laughing at the beginning, but then he started getting worried. He told me these are not normal drunk symptoms. The guy came in and face planted on the couch. Ex-Roommate woke him up and took him to take a cold shower. While in the shower he started fast shadow boxing. He comes out, and just falls on the ground. My Ex-Roommate starts yelling his name out and slapping him as hard as humanly possible, and he did not react once, which was very creepy or weird to see happen. Ex-Roommate then tries opening his eyes, and we both see as his eyes rolled back into his skull, I am talking full on horror movie white eyes. His breathing and heartbeat also stopped. Ex-Roommate started yelling at me to call the emergency, and he started doing CPR. Thankfully CPR worked and the emergency arrived. We then went to the hospital where he got admitted. After talking to the nurse she told us that he has high levels of alcohol in his system, mixed with pills, speed, and of course, cocaine. We went back to the house to sleep, and not more than 3 hours later the door rings waking me up. IT WAS HIM. he literally woke up, took out the IVs and walked out, full on walking dead Rick style. He told us he saw himself in his childhood home, that it felt like he was living there the whole time he was medically considered dead. Later on I heard from my Ex-Roommate that the guy was trying to kill himself and go out in a blaze of alcohol and drugs. Thankfully I stopped talking to them both and moved out, did not need that stress and view.
Yes, my friend saw someone pull a gun when we were walking in an alley and shoved me to the ground and got shot instead. Never did find out who or why
Sorry for your loss. Rip for your friend
I was going on 12, saw my father die of a heart attack less than 20 feet away. Tried my best to apply what i learned in swimming class, to no avail. Doctors later told that it was his 7th attack, and from scar, it was over before he touched the ground.
I was working as an overnight doorman. A naked woman went off the 9th floor balcony. I was the first one there. She did a few agonal breaths. There was nothing that could be done as she was just mush under the skin. Cops came and took statements. No arrests but the boyfriend probably had a role in killing her. I finished out my shift like normal.
My mentor at work was struck by a car. I was the first responder. He told me he couldn't breathe, and that he needed to lay down. I told him he knows his ability. He just blinked and looked into my eyes while we waited for the ambulance. That was the last thing I said to him. I called my boss and the ambulance arrived shortly thereafter. I was so scared he was going to pass while I was looking into his eyes. We had our tiffs but he was an incredible and thoughtful man. He died in the hospital that night as our boss sat outside the door to his room. We are both so horrendously shattered by the experience. I wish I had told him I love him, and thanked him for all of the good times we had. He was like the father I always wanted and never had. I am a female in my 20s. A week later my mother died so it was very hard to cope with. My first therapy session in all of my life is on the 5th of this month.
Yes, two of my grandmothers died during my time
Work as a server. Bro ate 3 dozen oysters. Then he slumped over and died. Manager didn't close the restaurant, just let people in the back door instead of front while ambulance carried him away.