LogFAQs > #929657667

36. The dread of the impending loss of a loved one in a bad state (19 points)
Nominated by: Pirateking2000 (1/5 remaining)

Importance: 10
Fear: 8
Snake: 1

I haven't talked about this at all on here, but for the past couple of years, my grandma had been very sick. She was effectively in a coma for about a year from 2015-2016, on life support while battling a particularly bad case of pneumonia. It seemed like she would never wake up, but by a miracle she eventually overcame it and was okay for a while, but further complications and gangrene made her lose her left foot, then her whole leg shortly after. Still, she persevered and things seemed alright again, for a year she was mostly pretty healthy and was even able to leave her nursing home sometimes. However, this past year, things got extremely bad. Her pneumonia popped up again and again with frightening recurrence, and just when it seemed like it would be alright, she was headed right back to the hospital again only a few days later. During this time, she had also lost her other leg. Around the end of August we were pretty much told she only had a couple of months left, if lucky. I couldn't believe the end was so near, and that any day could be the last, and I started wondering constantly when it would happen and particularly how my mom would react to losing her mother, with them being so close. It was just so hard to take my mind off of it. No one this close to me had ever been in this type of situation before. My grandma actually died a day before October 1st, coming swiftly and quietly at about 5:30 in the morning. There was certainly a weird mood in the air that day and that whole week until the funeral, but I no longer had that dread. Death is a very strange thing like that. I don't want this to sound heartless, but there's a sort of relief that comes with death too and I realized that fully for the first time in my life.

So yeah, this was a weird and anxious time in my life that already seems like a blur even though it was only a short while ago. Obviously, horror deals with death quite often, and there are several films that tackle this dread too. It Follows personifies this feeling, portraying it as the invisible, yet stalking, lingering emotion it can often feel like it, visible and understandable only to the one going through it currently. The Ring's videotape curse puts a looming expiration date on our lives, asking us to confront it head on and question what we would do if we knew when we were going to die. Final Destination is a franchise built around this very dread, the premonitions of death giving us the knowledge we need to stop it, but ultimately discovering no one can cheat death for long. I've always the held the belief that horror is one of the best ways of confronting these negative emotions, and that these films helped me at least in some way prepare for this inevitably that plagues us all. Still, it's not a feeling I hope to replicate any time soon.
---

I try in vain to slumber, my reveries gripped by violent terror. My only salvation, the shock of awakening. Something is very, very wrong here.