Having lived with my grandma since young, I grew inevitably attached to her. Whenever I needed any advice or someone to talk to, I knew that I could always turn to her and she would be there for me.Â
As I started growing older, my grandma’s health started deteriorating. The past 2 years was excruciating for all of us. She was brought in and out of the hospital frequently. Her sons didn’t see to care much about her wellbeing while my mum was clueless about what to do. Therefore, I felt the need to step up to look after her. I remembered that I would spend time reading up on my grandma’s conditions to find ways to help her.
A condition she had was dementia and it was painful to see her slowly forgetting about me. She started thinking I was one of her sons and I felt disappointed that she would think that her unfilial son would be looking after her like I did. However, I slowly realized that what was most important was that she was blissed. Even though I would spend time with her to keep her mind active, I felt that I wasn’t doing enough. I felt that if only I had spent more time with her then her dementia wouldn’t have progressed so quickly.
A year later, covid happened. My grandma was unwell again and I thought it was unwise to send her to the hospital, thus, I decided to call a house call doctor I found online to visit her. I regretted that decision badly as she got a stroke a few days later, which I felt was due to the dubious injection the house call doctor had given her. I googled and found out that this doctor had been suspended in the past for disregarding medical guidelines. Although there was no evidence that proved his injection caused the stroke, I felt immense guilt nonetheless. My grandma lost the ability to move one side of her body and I felt that it was all my fault. However, the doctor said that with intense therapy, my grandma could regain some of her functioning again.
I felt hopeful and kept encouraging my grandma to exercise. I even tried engaging home occupational therapists in hopes that she would get better. Unfortunately, she didn’t get better. In fact, her functioning got worse over time. She became bed-bound, she was asleep most of the time, and she started eating and drinking less as well. In the weeks before she passed, she couldn’t swallow her food properly, she couldn’t speak, and she could barely keep awake. Despite all that, she would still put a big smile on her face whenever she sees familiar people at her bedside. Soon, she couldn’t even eat and struggled to breathe before she inevitably passed on.
As I looked at her death certificate and see the words ” passed away peacefully”, I thought to myself, did she really passed away peacefully? I always thought that I would just wake up one day to find my grandma motionless. To me, that was my fantasy of a peaceful death.
Nobody ever told me that witnessing the death of a loved one would be so painful. I was feeling so helpless when I see my grandma’s vitals getting weaker every day, knowing very well that her imminent death was coming. And as she gasped her final breath, I heaved a sigh of relief as I know her suffering had ended. As I stood beside my grandfather at my grandma’s casket, I asked my grandfather to pen down any last words he has for her.
With his limited knowledge of English, I saw him struggled to write these words…. “I LOVE YOU”. It was then that I felt a sharp pain in my heart. And as I’m writing this at 3am in the morning, I think to myself, how will I ever move on from this loss?