Poll of the Day > R.I.P. Grandpa

(+) Yeah! (+)

He was always willing to support my gaming habits when I was a little kid.

We recently shared a moment when he looked at the Switch while I was playing BotW and showed real interest in Link and what he was doing. I was fighting some snow golem on a mountain top.

2020 sucks.

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It is the nature of things to end. If you understand this now and embrace it fully in every moment going forward, your life will be abundantly more vivid and appreciative.

Every interaction will then have new value to you when you see through the veil of language.

"I'll see you next week. I'll catch ya next month."

No, you won't necessarily. It's all fantasy. You have now and you have it with whomever you spend it with.

BE WELL. R.I.P.

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Sorry for your loss.

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sorry for your loss dude

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I'm sorry for your loss. My aunt died this week as well.

My condolences.

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Both of my grandfathers died within the span of one month. The one on my dad's side on April 18th, and the one on my mom's side on Tuesday.

This is horrible.

my sincerest condolences, ok?

TheWorstPoster posted...

Both of my grandfathers died within the span of one month. The one on my dad's side on April 18th, and the one on my mom's side on Tuesday.

This is horrible.

the poor man is in mourning, don't make this a contest, it's tacky, ok?

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Thank you, guys.

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Sorry for your loss. Just remember all the good times you had with him.

"Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed. Hearing the footsteps of his teacher, he held the pieces of the cup behind him. When the master appeared, Ikkyu asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the older man. "Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: "It was time for your cup to die."

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WhiskeyDisk posted...

"Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed. Hearing the footsteps of his teacher, he held the pieces of the cup behind him. When the master appeared, Ikkyu asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the older man. "Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: "It was time for your cup to die."

"Now it is time for you to die"
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I'm sorry for your loss. I know how it feels to lose a grandparent, I lost four out of five (I'm including an in-law) but before the pandemic. I first lost my maternal grandfather to cancer in spring 1998 when I was 8 years old. I loved that man, he was my favorite and always made me laugh. He died too young at 62. I lost the other three in quick succession, starting with my paternal grandmother by marriage (she married my grandfather before I was born and I always considered her my third grandmother) in February 2017. Her death was sudden and unexpected. She fell ill one day and was sent to the hospital. My father was there, then she was apparently getting better and was to return home soon, so my father left and by the time he returned home (the trip was 1-2 hours), something went wrong and she died. My biological paternal grandmother died the following summer due to complications linked to Alzheimer's disease. I had technically lost her a decade early when she couldn't remember me anymore and I stopped seeing her as a result. Finally, my paternal grandfather died of old age and grief in February 2018 when he was 91. His funerals took place exactly one year after his wife's. He had lost the will to live. He survived cancer twice, but losing his wife was too much of a toll.

My only grandparent still alive is my maternal grandmother. She's 85 and not really in good shape. She's still autonomous, but has difficulty walking, hearing and seeing. We had to postpone her cataract surgery for her remaining eye (the other was fixed, it was decided that we wouldn't operate both eyes at the same time) due to the pandemic. She lives in an apartment block for the elderly and thankfully the virus hasn't penetrated its walls. The staff is handling the situation quite well. Visitors aren't even allowed inside. She hasn't left her home for over two months now. She's precious to me and the rest of our family, so we all want her to remain inside and quarantine herself. We talk to her on the phone to make sure she's fine and she doesn't get lonely. Although I do miss seeing her, I don't want her to be a victim of COVID-19. We'll be sure to do a party at her place once the pandemic is over for good.

I've always been closer to my mother's side of the family. Losing my grandfather in 1998 was really hard. It was much less difficult losing those from my father's side. I was still sad, but it didn't hit me quite as hard. Since my remaining grandmother started to show signs of deterioration 4-5 years ago, I started to come to accept the reality that she won't be around forever anymore, but losing her will be really hard, that's for sure. This pandemic doesn't help. Normally I'd want to spend as much time with her as possible, but doing so right now could potentially cause her premature death.

Cherish the time you have left with your loved ones and cherish the memory of those you have lost.

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Thank you, @Accrovideogames .

Im now down to one grandparent. My grandfather who owns a farm. Hes almost 90 and I think his health is due to high activity doing farm chores and natural country cooking.

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I want to make a few corrections to my previous post. My paternal grandfather, his wife and my paternal grandmother died on February 2019, February 2018 and summer 2019 respectively, all one year after what I said. My maternal grandmother also lives in a condominium, not an apartment block.

HornedLion posted...

Im now down to one grandparent. My grandfather who owns a farm. Hes almost 90 and I think his health is due to high activity doing farm chores and natural country cooking.

You're right, staying active can do wonders to your health. If it wasn't for that damn Alzheimer's disease, my paternal grandmother would still be alive and kicking today. She owned a huge house with her two sisters in a rural town. She lived upstairs while the other two lived downstairs, although one of the sections downstairs also included a second story. One of the sisters only used her section of the house (the one downstairs with more verticality) as a secondary home, so she let my father and his two kids use it whenever we spent a week there during the summer. We went there twice a year, once during the summer for at least a week and once during winter's holidays for slightly less than a week. Since the lodge was occupied (most of the family was there to celebrate the new year), we had to share our grandmother's section, but thankfully there were enough beds for everyone. I actually loved that place, it was huge. The backyard was immense and it included a lake and forest! She would wake up early every morning to swim to a small island in the middle of the lake and back, except during winter of course.

I lost my great aunt, the sister permanently living downstairs in her section of the house, to Alzheimer's disease a long time ago. Her deterioration and death was harder on my younger sister than me because she spent a lot of time with her while I was busy exploring or playing video games. She eventually had to be placed in a nursery home and died three years later. We got to use her section of the house instead of the other one ever since she left for the nursery home, whether it was in the summer or winter. I don't remember the exact year but I do remember playing Star Fox Adventure on the GameCube there after recently getting it for Christmas, so she was no longer living there in December 2002.

My grandmother showed signs of the disease when I was 13 or 14. She eventually had to sell the house and live in a small apartment. She thought her landlady was illegally entering her home and stealing her stuff, she gave me a remote controlled toy truck as a Christmas gift and she let herself be scammed by selling her car five times under its market price. At this point we had to place her in a nursery home. She managed to one-up the toy truck by giving me a bunch of multicolored socks sized for small children for my birthday and the card that came with it was just a card some company sent to her to thank her for being a loyal customer, she had simply written my name inside it. I donated both the truck and socks to charity. My father also became her legal tutor and kept me up to date when I stopped seeing her.

In the few years preceding her death, she was in a near vegetative state, incapable of eating herself and using the toilet. It's absurd that people had to change her diapers and everything. That woman was such a hard worker. I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't for this disease, she would still be swimming to that island to this day. Heck, she would still be doing it way past the age of 100. She managed to survive more than 15 years with the disease. Her slow deterioration broke records in slowness. This is because she was very healthy thanks to her active lifestyle. But her genes were damaged. Her entire family died of Alzheimer's disease. Her other sister showed signs of the disease one day and died a year later, her deterioration was fast. At least one of her children also died from it. The three sisters had already lost their parents and most of their grandparents to that same disease.

Thankfully, I doubt I'll get it. There's absolutely no history of the disease on the grandfather's side of the family. His parents and grandparents didn't have it, same goes for his uncles, aunts and cousins. As for his descendants, none of them have shown signs of the disease despite three of them being elderly. My father is the youngest of three siblings and he'll turn 68 next month. That man also has 21 descendants, I counted them at his funeral. One of them had previously died as a baby due to choking on food (his funeral was really sad), so I didn't count him, but I did count one who was still in his/her mother's womb. He left quite a legacy and he was proud of it. My branch is the only one who hasn't made great-grandchildren to him yet, but we're also the youngest one considering my paternal cousins are 5-15 years older than me. His oldest great-grandchild is now 20 and she's popular with the boys, so she might do like her parents did in their mid 20s and start a family in a few years.

My mother's side of the family is also completely free of Alzheimer's disease. The only thing I had to be careful about was cystic fibrosis. I lost an uncle in 1995 to it, which was my first experience with a relative's death. I also didn't get to know an aunt who died a year before my birth. Out of the three remaining siblings, two carry the gene (50% chance) and one doesn't (25% chance). My mother carries it, so she made sure my father didn't have it before having children with him. I tested for it when I was 17-18 and the result was negative (50% chance), so it's impossible for my children to have the disease. My sister hasn't tested yet.

Such is the cycle of life and death. People are born, then they die. Life is short, so don't take it for granted and cherish the time you have. I also know from experience that reminiscing about your deceased loved ones can bring back good memories and feel like they're still present. This is however easier after some time has passed. You have to give yourself the time to mourn them first. The longest I spent mourning someone was my maternal grandfather. It took me a year before I could finally smile and laugh thinking about him.

The saddest part about losing someone in the current state of the world is that you can't hold funerals anymore, at least not like before.

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