I've been watching my friend's little boy for about a year and a half; he's 2 and a half. His mom calls me when something goes down and she needs emergency childcare, usually her husband's work but also her parents/mostly her dad's health issues.
She calls me in a panic cause her mom might've had a stroke, and her mom's mom died from a stroke. So I hustle up to her house and get there like an hour after she called me (20 minute drive, I hadn't eaten or had my second coffee yet). She books it over to the hospital, kiddo fights his nap, I brought my silly puzzle book so I'm not just on my phone. Kid finally goes to sleep for about an hour and mom texts "hours to days". Buddy boy wakes up. He knows I'm here and not his mom and he knows his grandma is sick. I give him his snack and his mom texts that she passed away. I'm sitting across from this gorgeous little boy asking why I said "oh no" after reading the text on my watch.
She had 3 1/2 hours. They moved her from the ER to hospice upstairs and she was gone. I'll spare the details but quick unpleasant death. Buddy boy's mom just had emergency gallbladder surgery last month, he's getting a baby brother due a month from today, husband's getting another new job like next week. I just met her mom at the baby shower only a couple days after my dad died.
My dad took the better part of two years. We'll say ~600 days to say goodbye. 600 days to say whatever he might've needed to say. 600 days to get his projects in order and close all his accounts, write down all his passwords, and not say anything of substance to us. Why did he have all this time when others leave without warning. Baby boy #2 will not meet his grandma. My nephew had 6 years and then some to get to know his grandpa, 2 years to understand that he would be leaving soon. Did my dad show much interest in the kid? About as much interest as he showed in us when we were kids. (Like you can't correct a 3-year-old kid's grammar and expect them to understand and connect with you on it. Didn't work in the 80s/90s, didn't work in the 20s either.)
It's also the 4th (?) sudden parental death I've heard of in the past couple months. My childhood friend's dad got mad cow or the similar genetic prion disease, they were still doing testing when they held the funeral. Too dangerous to say goodbye. My old coworker-turned-family's mom also went to the hospital and didn't come home. Now he's caring for his medically complex niece, along with the nephew he adopted as a baby who had a firework explode in his face last year and was in the peds icu for 6 months. A Star Trek mutual here whose mom suffered a freak accident. No warning, just gone
I don't know. It's like my dad leeched the life from all these random people I'm tangentially connected to so he could hang on with his old man strength. For what purpose? I have no idea. He didn't even know. "I can't understand why I've been given so much time" and then I never went back until right after he died cause he hadn't decided to actually use it for closure or forgiveness or anything related to his children
I feel like today's events are so much more devastating than my own. Like I lost a parent but we had the luxury of time. Did we have many challenges related to waiting all that time? Of course, it was honestly very difficult spending 2 years hearing declarations of it'll be this day or I wanna live past that day. Every con I went to was like I can't go too far cause he might decide to die, and I felt massive guilt for leaving. Every job my sister had out of town came with the same immense guilt. But he had 600 days; she didn't even have 600 minutes. I feel bad that I ate and made another coffee before bombing up there cause she could've had just a little more time, even though I know it was a reasonable amount of time when asked to drop the rest of the plans for the day
They came home. I didn't tell the kid; that's certainly not my place. I tried to prepare him for the emotional shift. Your mommy might be really, really sad. Why? Cause your grandma's very sick and it's really bad. Ok. Then he crawls in the kennel and pretends to be a dog until his parents get home
I wandered the grocery store for an hour contemplating the juxtaposition. Then I was walking this dog I'm watching and nearly got run over by a teenager speeding on the pedestrian path on a motorbike.
All I know is this life it's not fair
