I love you, Grandpa. [...Edit]

.....Well, it's more or less confirmed.

My grandfather ain't coming back.


On Wednesday of this week, my grandfather showed signs consistent with having had a "small stroke". The aides working at the home care place he lives in quickly called an ambulance and rushed him to our local major hospital, where my aunt stood by him.
He couldn't use the left side of his body, but he had retained some measure of speech. The doctors were going to do tests to assess the damages in the following morning.

That night, seeing his eldest daughter sitting, looking rather tired next to him he told her "Go home." and she did. He went to sleep.

Those were the last words he ever spoke to a family member.
Because apparently overnight the damages apparently worsened, and he never opened his eyes or spoke again.


The next morning, (Thursday,) the scans went through and confirmed that the damages were quite severe in the back and both sides, though one side was hit harder than the other.
Given that it was highly unlikely that he would ever recover from this, the doctor advised looking into Hospice for my grandfather's final days.

As he lost the ability to swallow food and had signed papers a few months back stating that he neither wished to be revived nor fed intravenously in case of something like this massively wiping out his quality of life (meaning, "if it's his time, let it happen"), this is the final stretch for my grandfather, as he is neither eating nor getting the IVs he had signed that he did not want to receive.

So...

Today, (Friday,) the family all got together around 11:00-11:30am to visit Grandpa at the hospital.

As he's basically in a vegetative state even now... the most we could do is hold his hand and ask him to squeeze it and he will, showing that he can hear us.
We don't even know if he can process what is going on with all of the damages, but..... I like to believe that he can hear us, and that he has been fighting this 'til the last, trying to snap himself out of it...  I've noticed his (seemingly sporadic) movements and breathing got more violent as people talked about his last days... ..and I think it meant he was trying to snap out.. ..because HE hadn't given up yet...
Something similar happened once, several years ago. He had a horrible concussion and couldn't talk right for like a day or two. But! He told us afterward that the whole time he could see and hear everything people were saying, just he couldn't respond. ....And when he COULD start to respond, he was confused why the hell nobody could understand what he was saying XD; (until the third day, he could greet someone normally because his mouth obeyed him, finally XD; )
So... It makes me wonder if he's trapped, still fighting to the last, again...
When my grandfather was young, he was diagnosed with epilepsy. (this was something that I inherited as well owo; )
One day, he was having an epilepsy attack and he told it "NO, I'm NOT letting this happen ANY MORE!!" and he gritted his mind and fought it off, and supposedly never had a seizure again.
...My grandfather is stubborn to the last, hehehe....

In any case... ...I do hope he snaps out of it, but I just don't know what will happen any more. He might just have to go through the stages of grief himself as he realizes he CAN'T will his body out of this one.. ...But ye gods, I hope he can.



My cousins and I spent the afternoon exchanging stories about my grandfather as we knew him. From our youngest memories at their house on a suburban hillside overlooking a lushly forested Washingtonian valley a town east of Seattle, to our adolescent years when they (my grandparents) got a place in a gated community on one of the many large islands in Puget Sound (the body of water Seattle exists on the edge of) and we used to spend every summer there together, as cousins. So many wonderful memories... I am thankful of them all.



In any case...
After seeing him today, I feel like I've said and done all I can really do for him, so I feel somewhat "at peace" over my relationship with him.
If I never see him again before he dies, I feel like... I've come to terms with his loss even as it is now..  ...But, I know full well I'll see him several more times yet..



Just... Yeah.
This is hitting me pretty hard.

My grandfather and grandmother had a large part in raising my sister and I... With two working parents, my sister and I saw perhaps more of my grandparents than we saw of our parents sometimes..
This reminds me a lot of how my other grandfather died almost three years ago, back in early January, as he died of a pair of sudden heart attacks causing his heart to have stopped for too long and he had been rendered in a vegetative state for several days before we found out his brain had more or less died that day. He would've been 80 a few months later, back in 2012.

I guess, I don't really know what to say any more, at this point.
I feel I can more or less say that I lost the last of my grandfathers..

He would've been 90 in December of this year..
(We can't exactly say he was "taken before his time" though. 90 is damned impressive no matter who you are.)


A fighter to the last.


(why is it typing those last words as the title of my journal that is what brings me to tears...? )



-------------------------------------



...Edit:
And if I thought my life wasn't "wonderful" enough already...
I guess I was kind of blocking this out when I wrote this journal originally, but, having seen it all go down over the past few days, culminating with last night (Saturday night)...

Thursday, one of my best friends / someone I thought I was dating for over a year now invited me (while COMPLETELY drunk, mind) to a voice chat after always nagging me for never joining for the gaming sessions or listening in on the voice chats (because I don't have a mic and I find it kind of socially awkward to have a bunch of voices of people I don't know, and no faces >w>; (I'm a mess with even just making phone calls to order a pizza on the phone, when I can walk into a store and order my food in person, no problem! ) ).
...Only for me to be introduced as the friend's "best friend", while someone else was introduced as the person my friend was dating. ....So, yeah, combined with my absolute garbage emotions from my grandfather getting hit by a terminal stroke, I now had to find out that I was basically getting NTR'd(*) by being introduced to my (I thought) significant other's significant other.

I didn't know how to respond to that, but as I listened to my friend talking with 'em more... ...I just realized more and more that this wasn't some weird "Second Life Mates" thing, but actually an actual "relationship".
And of course my emotions utterly TANKED as a result, like I was even happy with being constantly criticized for interrupting my friend's "flow" the entire night anyway... ...Wow, good luck getting me into another one of those voice chats you worked "so hard" to get me to join. Thanks for fucking NTR'ing me the first time you did it, right as I found out about my grandfather, you loose piece of garbage!

It took days before I was willing to confront my friend about it, by pretty much just prodding for whatever kind of relationship we have, exactly. It's been known for over a year now that we absolutely "love" each other. I THOUGHT that love was "romantic". Apparently my friend thought so too, but had "never felt the need to apply a title to describe it", and that the love we had was of the "boyfriend/girlfriend" variety.

...So why then, was I just introduced to someone's new lover, when we've been "together" for maybe a year and a half now?

when asked about it, I was told that frankly, that person "made the first move", by asking to go out with 'em.

Really. You mean my telling that I love this person and want them to spend the rest of their life with me by my side, and that I would never want to be without them.. HOW do confessions like that not equate more like a fucking MARRIAGE PROPOSAL than a "would you go out with me?" ?!  I feel like my declarations of love and commitment were not only stronger, but drastically pre-dating this other person asking out.
But now I'm told that had I asked sooner, the answer would've been "yes" before I could even finish the sentence, and yet as much as this person loves me, this person is extremely loyal to people who have declared some form of commitment with them.

...Really.... You mean, for over a year and a half now, we've just been "overly affectionate" friends? I do NOT throw around the word "love" easily. Nor does this person. HOW did that not just make it OBVIOUS that we were together from then onward?
I know with my health issues, I could never provide what you needed sexually, so I was always fine with you RPing it out with whoever the hell would bang you. I understand you have needs. Just... ....Are you really this dumb? Did you never even think to ASK if we were something before you just accepted this person's proposal without a second thought? You said you never wanted to "assume" we were something, even if we basically were, for over a year now.  You never wanted to assume, and I thought we were already committed to each other. Even if we WEREN'T going out, who the hell doesn't tell their best friend that they just hooked up with someone? If nothing else, I can't even congratulate you for your new relationship...
Well, I guess I don't have to worry about not being able to provide for you any more...   Oh, what an idiot I was, to have stressed myself out over the last year and change for never being what I felt you needed... ...Why the FUCK would I care if you get enough nookie if I wasn't dating you? What kind of friend actually cares about providing for someone's sex life if they aren't romantically involved somehow? I can cheer on my best friends and hope they find someone, but WHY ON EARTH would I offer myself IF I DIDN'T LOVE YOU? You KNOW I love you. You SAID you loved me. DON'T PEOPLE ONLY SAY THAT TO PEOPLE THEY ARE GOING OUT WITH?!

I just feel horribly cheated on right now, to watch as someone I love with all my heart just left me for someone who didn't know I even existed, "because my friend didn't even know I was 'in the running' ".

You know your life sucks when a beloved family member basically just died and that pain actually got trumped by a prominent person in your own emotional support structure abandoning you.


* NTR: "Netorare". "Having your lover taken from you" or "to have something taken from you while you sleep". This is often accomplished by having someone's one seduced away from them, with or without their knowledge.

~Pururin's tag definition, cropped and slightly paraphrased by me for brevity


Edit2:
and... Yeah. Honestly, we've talked it out and I thought I was in a better place after talking with my friend into the drastic wee hours of the morning (...3am my time >3>; ) but, waking up I realize I still have a lot of hurt over the situation. If my friend reads this, I have but two things to say:
1) We've said what we're going to say. This isn't really for you. This is for me. It isn't anything we haven't told each other yesterday already so don't you dare get mad at me for making some snippy remarks at you because I'm venting here o__o;
2) ...I think it's safe to say I've earned the right to make a few remarks after all that =A=;