So my cousins' grandmother is 96. She is a very close friend and I consider her to be as much my grandmother as my own "blood" grandparents. Her health has been getting worse and worse year after year but she was still doing fairly well and was living by herself relatively independently. However, a few days ago she slipped and fell late at night and really messed herself up. She broke her arm, messed up her shoulder, and lost a lot of blood. She had to crawl ten feet to get to her phone but was so hurt that it took her nearly an hour to do so. She had surgery yesterday and it was told to her that, due to her age and physical health, there was a good possibility that she would never wake up again following the surgery. My whole family and I saw her before the surgery and she stated that she was scared to go to sleep and didn't want to die. Luckily she didn't. She was stable through the whole surgery. However, she isn't out of the clear yet. She told me that she is still scared to close her eyes and go to sleep because she is afraid she'll never open them back up.
The reality is that she could die at any moment. Her death is at arms reach and the fact that her physical health is failing so much suggests that she is really coming up on it. I feel so sorry for her because she hasn't embraced this fact yet. She is scared to die yet there it is staring her in the eyes. She is a stones throw away from it. But she continues to cling on to the idea of life and so she is scared to death of dying. Not that she should expect to die and deny life. Rather, I would like it if she could accept the reality of death so that she could die fulfilled rather then scared. It made me really think about myself in such a situation. What would I do? How could I prepare myself?
I don't really want advice. I'm curious more about how each of you would prepare for your own deaths in such a scenario. What would you do? How could you work past the fear? At the moment I honestly don't know what I would do.
Log in to comment