[war1025]

> Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end

This rings very true for me.

My dad died of brain cancer going on five years ago now.

He was diagnosed in 2014. They were clear the prognosis was not good. One or two years at best.

They removed the tumor as soon as they found it, and he returned basically to normal. There was a weird settling in of what it all meant and treatments that were meant to stall things a while.

But since the tumor was small, he was able to function and be basically his old self.

We had our first daughter in the fall of 2015. He was there to meet her. Everything felt like it was looking up.

Three weeks later, on my first day back to work, I got a call at 10:30. "The cancer is back." I took the day off.

At Christmas, he was definitely starting to act goofy and be more forgetful. We'd have to distract him so he didn't try to go plow the driveway or do things like that.

It became a question of "do we go up every weekend, or can we take this weekend off?"

And then at the beginning of February things started getting really bad and my mom moved him into a nursing home in town. That lasted for a little less than a week I think. Then it was clear this was the end.

So we came up in the middle of the week. Sat by his bedside for hours on end. Held his hand.

My dad had two things he'd always say about dying:

1. When someone comes to die, they need someone to hold their hand.

2. People need permission to die. Otherwise they will hang on way longer than they otherwise would.

So I held his hand for a couple days. And then on maybe the third evening, it became pretty clear he was deteriorating.

So I leaned over, kissed him on the head, told him that he'd done a great job raising me and my brother, and that it was okay and we'd be here till the end.

And then we watched him die. I think it was about 4am when he finally passed.

I never remember what day it was, but I do remember that Lent had just started and he died the morning of Transfiguration Sunday. Which the internet tells me was Feb 7, 2016.

There's a Deathcab for Cutie song, "Love is watching someone die." It's the truth. You have to love someone a lot to be there through that.

Anyway, to come back around, it all just went so much faster than you think it would. Especially towards the end.

It took a little over a month for "Dad's acting funny again" to turn into "Dad died last night".

[jcims]

Thanks for sharing this. When you're in the midst of everything it's important to temper the hope of healing with the reality that if that doesn't come you're in a very special, very limited window of time.

>2. People need permission to die. Otherwise they will hang on way longer than they otherwise would.

I wrote about this elsewhere, but my wife on a couple of occasions said 'I think it's time for you to let me go.' I didn't really understand what she meant by that. She was incredibly stoic and was happy to leave the words for me to interpret. I was still so wrapped up in trying to find a way out that I couldn't conceive of just letting go...it felt truly like those scenes in a movie where someone is hanging off of a building and your grip is the only thing keeping them alive. After she passed, her words gained new meaning to me and this was part of it. Permission to go, and permission to talk about the life that comes afterwards. Not figuring this out in time to alleviate some of her pain and let her share her dreams about the future without her is one of my biggest regrets.

[lordnacho]

> > Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end

Happened to me as well, on several occasions.

My dad passed away just before New Year a few months ago. At the time I thought him going to hospital was going to be yet another scare, and he should just get his act together and eat properly and exercise. Never got around to it, and his last words were some gibberish.

I felt like maybe there should have been proper last words, but looking back there were. His terminal stage had actually started a few years before, at a bypass surgery. At the time he told me that if the surgery didn't work, he'd be happy to die. Life had treated him just fine, no big issues with anyone to report. Happy with having three kids and a couple of grandchildren. Nothing left to do.

And so the next three years passed with him not doing anything the doctors had told him to do, and we got used to periodic ambulance calls (heart attacks, blood sugar incidents). Somehow he made his life summary come true, nothing more to do.

On another occasion, one of my high school classmates passed away from cancer at 29. I knew he'd had it before, but then it seemed to pass, and being young I thought it wasn't a huge problem because he seemed chipper and full of zest. He had a girlfriend and a career. When it came back I figured I'd drop by to see him, but in a few weeks on my holiday. Ended up being sooner, for his funeral.

[aagha]

This utterly breaks my heart. I'm so sorry for your loss.

I too lost my mother to cancer and was there the morning I noticed hear breathing change and could tell she was about to leave.

It's hard to fathom when someone that raised you suddenly leaves your life. To this day I remember her last moments and my own wailing at both the moment she passed and when I crumpled to my knees as she was buried.

[yodsanklai]

> It took a little over a month for "Dad's acting funny again" to turn into "Dad died last night".

I lost my mother from lung cancer so I can relate.

My dad on the other hand died without notice. I got a message on my phone one day when I was at work. It was a cop from my father's town. They didn't tell me why they were calling, but I knew something happened to my father because he was living on the edge. I took the day off and went home to call them back. He died a few days before at his home.

He was too young to die, but I think it was the best possible death, for him and for us. We didn't have a chance to "say good bye", but it doesn't really matter in the end.

The worst part of dying is anticipating death. I wish I could die accidentally.

[jcims]

I agree. I got a similar call that my dad was killed at work when I was in my early 20s. Due to the circumstances I'm not convinced it wasn't intentional on his part, and in some odd ways I get a bit of relief from that. It was devastating to me, but watching my wife and the mother of my children go through a tortuous 26 months of treatments, unrelenting pain, cycles of hope and despair, various indignities and ultimately passing in a confused state was orders of magnitude worse.

[dmerks]

Similarly, the despair and agony is really what hit me most. Last autumn, my father began experiencing occasional cramps in one leg after a regular 75k bike ride. During the following month, the pain gradually spread throughout his body and increased in frequency, seemingly for no apparent reason, based on medical tests and scans. He slowly stopped eating as his body was being consumed day and night: he lost healthy weight at a rate of one pound per day. As muscle weakness spread and as he lost his faculty to walk, he grew steadily delirious with pain and lack of sleep. By the 1st of December, he was in hospital full time undergoing a barrage of tests to no avail; a diagnosis of ALS was given mid-month. During the following week, he spoke his last words. In the throes of his body collapsing, he would tear out IV and catheter. At the rate at which his situation was deteriorating, feeding tube and intubation coupled with restraints appeared cruel. He passed before the end of the year.

[alexpetralia]

Thanks for sharing.

[sacks2k]

"Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end"

This happened to me as well. My brother passed at age 47 in 2013. He was initially diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer and things seemed to be going alright for about a year.

The issue was that the tumor was near a major blood vessel and surgery failed because they were afraid he would bleed to death.

Even after this failed surgery, we had hope with some experimental treatments. He lasted another year.

After a couple of rounds of chemo, he went from bad to worse within a couple of weeks. I had never experienced death like this before and it all came a a shock to me how quickly he passed away.

The worst part is that he fought the idea of death to the very end (I'm sure we all do). There were no plans for his one-man successful business and his wife had to get all of his passwords for important accounts when he was delirious from all of the drugs in his system and nearly on his death bed. He truly thought he would beat it.

The aftermath was like a bomb went off in our family.

His wife begged me to help her with his business on the day of the funeral. I realized he had been neglecting customers for 6 months+ (this is completely understandable, given his condition) and they were screaming for their money back. I spent many weeks/weekends/long nights cleaning up the business and getting the business back to a reasonable level, gaining back customers that would have been lost. This was all for free, to help her (and his kids) out. I explained to her that future work would not be free.

I also had to help her return all kinds of electronics that he bought while he was on chemo drugs. He managed to rack up $50,000 in bills because he would forget that he ordered something..and order 10 of them.

To this day, I'm not sure how she didn't notice all of these amazon packages coming to the door and thinking nothing of it.

After this was done, I told his wife that if she wanted me to continue with this business arrangement, I would need to be a partner in the business. She not only didn't want to do this, but told me I only 'answered emails' and didn't do any actual work, which was clearly not true.

She wanted to give me a free cell phone and pay me around $10/hour as compensation for future work. It was also explained that she had contacted a lawyer and it was stressed that all of the intellectual property from the business was not mine. Kind of strange to me to already assume I'm going to steal intellectual property from you when I just saved you many thousands of dollars and your business..for free.

At this point you may be thinking she's just naive and may not understand the work involved. She worked in the computer industry for a decade. This is how she met my brother. She understands the work it takes to run his business and only wanted to take advantage of me.

As an aside, my brothers business involves: tech support, software development of multiple products in at least 3 languages, and knowing the business. I have the ability do do all three, since I have been in the software/tech industry for the past 2 decades and have owned multiple successful companies. Him and I were very close and I had lots of knowledge about his business and what it entailed. We had ongoing tech discussions through email/chats/in-person for many years.

He was the one that bought me my first computer and was my mentor.

4 months later, she emailed me a contract with a proposal. I would get 5% of the profits for working on it full-time and her kids would own 100% of the business. This was a slap in my face and I declined the offer. With the declining profits in the business, this would have been like working at

The problem is that I would need to work on it full-time to actually save it from failure. If I signed the contract, only worked on it part-time, and it failed, I would be blamed. I also don't like to half-ass anything...especially when it comes to running a business.

She then proceeded to get anyone she could find to work on the business for free and started creating a wedge in my immediate family by spreading false information about the situation. She ended up roping in one of his clients, who had become a friend, to answer all emails for free.

She describes him as a 'good, christian, man'. The funny part is that she was never that religious..and I've known her for 25 years. One of her greatest traits is the ability to manipulate people. All of her friends are people that can do things for her. If she can't use you for something, you are cast off and ignored. She especially likes networking with anyone that has lots of money.

Fast forward to 2020 and the website is in terrible shape. A 7+ year out-of-date website that keeps getting hacked and badly mis-configured DNS records. I told her how to fix these on the first day, but my advice was ignored. I can only imagine how insecure the actual product is, since there have been no updates in all this time.

I also found out my other brother has been helping her for free and outright lying to me about it. I overheard a conversation a couple of days ago that they wanted to keep secret from me. He also has no idea what he's doing and badly butchered the site...but the price for his services is perfect (free).

I just wish my brother would have admit to himself that he may die and specifically write out his wishes for the business in his will. I think it would have prevented this entire situation.

I should probably thank him. It showed me that his wife is still the evil, conniving woman that she was many years ago and that she never really changed..she only got better at hiding it before he died.

But there's now these lingering issues at all family gatherings.

I now own two successful companies. I don't think I would have ever gotten to this level of success, even with a partnership in my brother's company and a business partner that would only fight me on every important decision.