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Comment by mrleiter | Hacker News Reader

Jo sadly passed away shortly after this article was published. [1] RIP.

[1] https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/they-came-to-celebrate-j...

The whole situation was terrible, but given the context, I wouldn't describe his passing as "sad"

"Early one morning, a week and a half after Jo stopped eating, he peacefully exited the world with the people who loved him most by his side. He had not spent a single day in a hospital or long-term care facility."

Yes, maybe, I understand completely. Still, the final loss of a person, even if he wasn't himself anymore, is sad. It's the point of no return, the ultimate last step. Which I think to some degree is, always, sad.

That he died peacefully really is graceful.

One time I came to visit my dad in the care home, travelled home all the way from abroad. My dad was wandering outside in the garden and I was trying hard to remember the code of the gate to enter the facility. And then I heard it my dad calling my name. It’s was the greatest thing I heard. He hadn’t called me by name or recognised me in such manner for years. My siblings were jealous :)

That's wonderful! :)

My opinion is that death doesn't have to be sad. That's all a matter of perspective. It shouldn't necessarily be celebrated (death itself, not the person who died), but it does help to remember that often times, death means the end of suffering and pain.

True!

I really like the stoic philosophy regarding death. It agrees with what you’re saying. One of the key reasons why the end of suffering is good (even if it’s sad) is that the suffering person can’t really function as a human being anymore. If you’re no longer able to fulfill your role and your days are unbalanced with suffering, it’s considered sensible and honourable to die peacefully and intentionally. You were nothing for an eternity, you did your best to be a good person, now you’ll go back to that quiet nothing. It was fine that you didn’t exist, you existed, and it’ll be fine that you don’t exist.

Obviously this tidy philosophy doesn’t mesh with things like murder or other untimely deaths. It just encapsulates nicely why sometimes death is a good thing. And why we shouldn’t fear it.

> Jo was adamant that he didn’t want to end up in a long-term care facility like the one in which he’d visited his mother—sometimes with Robin along for the ride when they began dating as teenagers in Kapuskasing, Ont.—and he hoped that Canada’s legalization of assisted death would allow him to avoid that. But when medical assistance in dying became law in 2016, excluded were “advance requests” that would have permitted people with dementia to set out terms for their death while they still had capacity to consent.

Found this sobering. And somewhat relevant to my life, in a tangential way.

My grandfather passed away from his second bout with lung cancer, a couple years after Alzheimer's had started to take him over, around 5 years ago. He was a miner on the Iron Range in Minnesota, where my family is, so that explained the lung cancer.

My grandma passed away a week ago from COVID. She tested positive for it the weekend before, in her nursing home. The reason she was in a nursing home is that her memory had been fading, up until it was decided that she couldn't take care of her house alone anymore, around a year ago.

Her memory was to the point where she'd circle back to things she already told me about 20 minutes before. But she was still cogent and it was still her.

But she didn't like living in the nursing home, because it didn't feel like much of a life. More of a routine. All of our conversation were extremely positive--that's who she was, afterall--but they were always somewhat morose. She always made sure to devote time in each conversation to telling me how much she loved me, was proud of me, and I'd do the same, reminiscing on the memories we had of me staying with them over the summer as a kid.

But it was pretty obvious to me--even though she never announced she knew she was going to die without being able to return to that life--that she wanted to make sure I knew how she felt, that there was no room for me to have missed the opportunity to know that, and that she was doing that on purpose, with intent.

Some of the hardest aspects to her death come with the circumstances. When her oxygen dropped Thursday night, I couldn't call her. No one could. When she made it to the hospital, her oxygen dropped so far, so quick that all they could do was ensure her body didn't hurt as the virus suffocated her brain. No one could say goodbye, and she didn't get to say hers.

Now we're learning to grieve remotely. My mom has MS, so it's not even a question of gambling on the risks of a family gathering for me to see her. Long phone conversations. It doesn't get easier, but it gets more normal.

Part of me knows that death wasn't something my Grandma feared. It was the inevitable next step in her life, cornered by her body's incapacity to change it. I know she would've preferred for us to be there with her, and for her to have a chance to cry over it and say goodbye to the people she loved, the people that loved her.

I am so sorry for your loss. As someone that has gone through something similar about two months ago, and who is still grieving, I can tell you that I share the same thought - "Part of me knows that death wasn't something my Grandma feared" - and I believe we are right. That generation of people is extremely strong - they went through much more than we did. Your Grandma stoically handled the nursing home and every conversation with you, but so did you. In a way, I believe she was preparing you for her death. When my other Grandma passed away she told me that I should not worry or stress, but just grieve and reminisce, and that change of generation is required for the world to function properly.

I know the last few conversations you had with your Grandma were at times extremely hard to handle for you, as mine were with my Grandma. I'm making a lot of assumptions here and I apologize if they are off in any way. Grieve, reminisce and once again, I'm so sorry for your loss. I had to comment as this resonated with me on multiple levels.

Wow. Thank you. I truly appreciate that. And my sympathies for you and your family's situation as well. I know the process will grow and change, but it's also a reality that will never go away. I'll always love and miss my grandma.

What you've said means a lot to me. I don't quite have the words to express how much your empathy means, but it's comforting to hear it from someone who has a shared experience.

Thanks for sharing this. Your grandma sounds like she was loving and selfless. Putting aside her personal loss of varying degrees of agency and making sure you knew how important you were to her. Not all people are like that. I wish your family could have been with her.

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