At my age, I have no grand parents and whilst I attended all of their funerals, I was not present as their deaths. My mother is still alive and healthy although my father died unexpectedly when I was 20. He was 53, woke with a headache, went to work, collapsed, was taken to hospital with initial thoughts being he'd suffered a cardiac arrest only to discover he'd suffered an enormous cerebral haemorrhage.
When my sister and I got there, he was on a life support system and things were grim. It was determined early in the morning that he was brain dead and the machinery was keeping his body functioning.
This was in November of 1985 and organ donation was a rare thing, but becoming more aware publicly as you had only just recently been able to give consent to become an organ donor via your driver licence. Oddly enough, my father and I had had this very discussion just 3 weeks earlier when he told me that he was all for it and anyone was welcome to anything they could use from him when his time was up.
At around 9 am a doctor approached my sister and I (my sister being legally next of kin being the older of us two, my parents being divorced) and asked if we were willing to donate his kidneys. We discussed this briefly and gave consent. Within 90 minutes they had found two two people suitable to receive his kidneys.
The ran us though the surgical procedure, assuring us that he would still be treated as a patient and given the full courtesy one would expect and not simply as a cadaver. With that we went to say our goodbyes.
Whilst he was still breathing with the aid of the machine, he was gone. He just wasn't the man I knew as my father laying there in the hospital bed. I recall him looking very, very small as though all of the air had left him and he'd deflated.
We weren't rushed and left after a while. Upon leaving the intensive care unit, it was a requirement to was your hands with an antiseptic lotion. As we did so, an elderly gentleman in a bed next to the basins passed away, his heart monitor flat lining. I assume it was expected as no one rushed to offer him any aid.
We too went to see my father in the funeral home. I admit that I went more out of curiosity and at my grandmother's request. It didn't help the grieving process as he looked even smaller, his hair combed the wrong way and his coffin looked claustrophobic and tiny.
The only thing that truly made any sense of his death was the thought that there were two people now alive because of him. Organ donation at the time was strictly anonymous. We had no idea who his organs went to, nor did the recipients know where they came from, but today I like to think that perhaps there are children, maybe grandchildren of the people he helped around who wouldn't have been if he hadn't have died that day... so at least something good came of it.
I have been there for numerous pet deaths, the most recent one just 6 months ago when our dog Poppy was put to sleep after a sudden illness that caused massive internal bleeding. Traumatic, upsetting, heart wrenching and unforgettable for all of the wrong reasons. I have tears streaming down my face remembering all of the emotion as I write this.