God bless you
Thank you both for your compassion. Thank you for the thread Joe. I didn’t mean to make it about me. It is a good topic to think about and in my case it happens to be timely. Folks say and assume all kinds of things about what they have planned etc. But the reality is until it is in your face you really don’t know how you are going to deal with it. There are so many different variables due to the individual circumstances. Every passing is custom and has to be dealt with on the fly hour by hour as it progresses. And once you stop eating and drinking that is it, The caregiver needs to call everyone because you are down to the last few days. All they can do is make you more comfortable as it happens. And many times you are not even there mentally or conscious.
But I can tell you right now, fearing it will be pure torture for yourself and your caregivers. You must make peace with the reality for your own sake and the sake of your caregivers. It is all for nothing, it is not going to prevent it from happening and one has to accept this reality for what it is. My Father feared it and tortured himself and screamed out until the very end. It greatly extended his own mental anguish and ours. My wife was different, at first she feared it then when she realized there was no way left to stop it she accepted it because she knew she had already been living on borrowed time for a couple years already. So the last week went fairly calm and quick for her and us both. She was in extreme pain so it was a blessing at that point. She just wanted the pain to stop, and so did we for her sake.
But both did pass with the whole clan and all the Grandkids present, they were blessed and not alone in a strange rest home and the situation helped all of us just as much because we were all there to support each other. I am hoping everyone here has the fortune to have this loving environment when it is time. One could not ask for a more blessed situation to say the goodbyes. :)