My Grandad passed away of lung cancer, it will be a year on the 21st April. He went into hospital for end of life care and passed away the following morning. We weren’t told by the hospital that he didn’t have long left, we just got ‘the call’.
I’m not sure if this was on the hospitals part or whether my grandad had asked that they didn’t contact us, my mum seems to think it was because he didn’t want us to see him like that. I wanted to say goodbye and I never got the chance and it makes me angry. If it was because he had asked them not to contact us, I’m angry at him for taking that last moment away. I miss him a lot and I think about him every day but I’m still so angry and I feel guilty about feeling this way because I completely understand why but I just can’t help it… Is this normal?
Dear @Rosie_494
Welcome to the Community. I am so for your loss and I can see tomorrow is the 1st anniversary of the passing of your grandad.
What you are experiencing is perfectly normal and is part of the grieving process. Please do not be hard on yourself with the way you are feeling.
Sometimes when someone who is close to the end, they can make the decision earlier on before they get worse that they do not want family members there when they pass as they prefer you to remember them as to how they were. It is a hard call for the hospital to say exactly how long a patient has left and sometimes, as could be the case with your grandad, the patient passes more suddenly than expected and there was no time to call the family.
I understand your anger in not having the chance to say goodbye if this was the case. Tomorrow is the 1st anniversary of your grandad passing and this may be the opportunity to say ‘goodbye’ as you remember him.
I will be thinking of you. Please continue to reach out and take care of yourself.
Pepsi
Hello,
I thought my story may help you?
I was with my husband in the hospital 5 hours before he passed away, when I left I said to the nurse am I ok to go home? My husband was coming home the next day so wanted to check everything, she said the doctors are not expecting anything to happen imminently.
I then got the call in the early hours to say he.d passed, I was very angry, asking the below questions, the hospitals reply underneath (following a meeting with them)
We were told 2-4 months, but 5 days he was gone?
- this timeframe is only an estimate, every patient is different.
Why didn’t the nurse see that the end was near & advise me go stay?
- the end of life signs can last for days/weeks
Why didn’t they know the end was so near?
- people think that hospital doctors & nurses know when a person is about to pass, it’s not like that, my husbands passing was as much a shock to them as it was to me.
It helped hearing these things as my Anger was out of control, I hope what I was told helps you.