It's likely not what you might think at all.
While my father was slowly dying from complications from prostate cancer I thought this would be the hardest thing for me to deal with at the time. My father though he was a physical health culturist like Jack LaLane was not someone who went to doctors regularly. So, like his father before him had no faith in doctors at all and like his father believed one should only go to the hospital to die basically (if then) or to treat a broken arm or leg or get stitches. So, my father was into preventative medicine like an organic diet and distilled water and orange juice and organic carrot juice and this kind of thing.
However, when he didn't address his prostate cancer by having his prostate removed around 1980 then it slowly metastacized into other things like his bladder, his kidney etc. So, he had his prostate, bladder and one kidney removed in an operation in Palm Springs in 1984 only to get metastasized bone cancer and die from that in the summer of 1985. This was the most awful thing I had to deal with then because I couldn't get my father to get his prostate removed in 1980 or any time after that. He just didn't like doctors at all. So, I had to slowly watch him die at 69. Since I'm now 73 I have already outlived my father by 4 years.
No. The worst thing of all was my mother getting senile dementia starting in 1999 while we were visiting Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy in a motorhome I rented. At the time I didn't have a clue what was going on. In 1999 my mother would have been 80 years old and had recently stopped driving because she said she no longer felt safe driving a car. So, I now equate stopping driving a car with the end of her functional life as a human being.
She behaved okay when we were in England and Scotland and I took her to where her father and mother grew up around Glasgow, Scotland and as far north as Findhorn and the Cairngorm mountains and Inverness and Aviemore which is where wealthy English and Scottish people go to ski in the winters. The last time I was in Aviemore was 2011 and we saw the Reindeer and went up the Funicular there that skiers use in the winters.
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But, after we returned to California she started to really go downhill and I eventually had to put her in a rest home for people with Alzheimers and Senile Dementia. Because she had already almost burned her apartment down by putting a plastic bowl on an electric stove and then watching it burn and run down the stove while praying for the fire to stop we had no choice but to put her in a facility and this was the hardest thing for me to do.
In fact, I couldn't do it at all. My son and wife had to be in charge of this because I had promised my father this would never happen before he died. But, my wife wouldn't have her in our house because she didn't want my mother to burn down our house too.
I suppose if I had been single I would have taken a gun and walked my mother out into the wilderness and shot us both rather than to go through this.
But, luckily The Grace of God was with me and I realized: "Life is for the living" and my mother was on a death path and to some degree no longer living. Senile dementia is a fatal disease by the way and completely horrific to deal with (at least it was for me).
What I mean by "Life is for the Living" means that I had to take care of the living: "Myself, my wife, my children (and my grandchildren hadn't been born yet) at that time.
So, the worst thing I ever had to deal with was the last 7 years of my mother's life from 2001 until 2008 in a rest home designed for people with alzheimers or senile dementia.
One might think having to almost die myself the last couple of years would be worse. But, no, dealing with my mother was the worst thing I ever had to endure in my life. My own death wasn't hard for me to face for a variety of reasons. But, my dying was hard for me to face on behalf of my wife and family because I remembered the grief I felt for 13 years after my father died.
I didn't really experience the same grief with my mother because by the time she died it was a complete blessing for her and everyone else she knew on earth. So, when my mother went into a coma with a death rattle she didn't know who I was or who my son was or any of her grandchildren for about 2 years. So, when she passed away it was a blessing for her and everyone else.
By God's Grace
IT was even stranger than this. I was brought into the facility where she was to be shown my mother in a coma with a death rattle in her lungs which usually signifies death within about a month or less. I then made arrangements with a mortuary for her to be put on ice when she died and to be eventually cremated like she had wanted when she was still cognizant of being a normal adult.
But, here's the thing. My wife's father had just passed on the same year and we had to take his ashes to Saint Louis to be buried with his parents there. So, we flew to Los Angeles to change planes and in the airport I was called on my cell phone and notified my mother had died. This was an awful experience to find this out in an airport. There was nothing I could do but to support the living (my wife and young daughter) in taking my wife's father's ashes to Saint Louis. So, I had the mortuary put my mother's body on ice until I could return to the SF Bay area.
When we flew back to The SF Bay area I went to the crematorium and opened the box and unwrapped my popsicle mother who was frozen solid and I kissed her goodbye on the forehead before I pushed her body into the furnace to be burnt up. I walked outside and watched her smoke go up the 1 foot diameter chimney into the sky. I realized my mother would have loved to go into the sky like that as smoke knowing her from the old days. Then later, her ashes were gathered and put into an urn that I put into a velvet blue bag and I put that on my grand piano for a year or two until my son could deal with doing something with them. So, 1 or 2 years later we rented a yacht and put her ashes where John Denver had crashed his plane and died because she loved John Denver's music and wanted her ashes in the ocean so that is where we put her ashes.
Thanks for listening to the hardest thing I ever had to deal with in my life. I find it healing to write about it now. She passed away in 2008 in the fall. My wife's father passed away earlier in the summer that year too. I wondered why God had my wife and I lose our last parent the same year but in some ways it was good to get both deaths over together even though it was difficult to do.
By God's Grace
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