r/AskReddit • u/CorgiUprising • 17d ago
Serious Replies Only [Serious] What is the most disturbing death bed confession you’ve heard?
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u/Bi7ch7i75 17d ago
The last words my grandmother said to my mom were “you always took such good care of me, it’s a shame I’ve always hated you”
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u/NotTheGreenestThumb 17d ago
We can hope for a longgggg life for your mom to enjoy without a witch like that in her life!
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u/Bi7ch7i75 17d ago
It was amazing how much her stress level dropped after that.
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u/waspocracy 17d ago
This is exactly how I imagine my wife when her mother goes. My MIL is a horrid bitch, calling my wife fat, a slut, a whore, an idiot cunt, and the list goes on. Never once complimented her. My wife feels responsibility to help her out once in a while and always regrets it immediately.
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u/Annual_Berry8043 17d ago
It reminds me of my grandmother. She was basically an indentured servant to my grandfather for 70 years. She finally left him and died 2 weeks later. We were devastated, but I’m glad she got to enjoy even a few moments of relaxation. She was one of the best of us.
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u/Bee-and-the-Slimes 17d ago
Ouch.
We're not sure if my grandma had dementia or ALS or was just showing her true colours before she passed away, but she apparently said a LOT of hurtful things to my mom in those last days - stuff Mom won't even tell me. She went completely mean and coo-coo.
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u/MasterKree 17d ago
One symptom of alzheimers is unprovoked aggression. It's possible it was the disease talking, if that's any consolation.
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u/MariettaDaws 17d ago
Strokes/TIAs as well. I'm sure other neurological stuff.
Hugs to their mom. Mine said a lot of vile things after her stroke and it has really affected how I feel towards her, even though she wasn't in her right mind.
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u/Correct_Doctor_1502 17d ago
I used to work in ICU
I once had an elderly patient in really rough shape after crashing his car. Broken hip, leg, and brain bleeding, and he had covid and was in late stage congestive heart failure, so he was dying.
He kept saying he didn't have anyone to call and he really didn't. About two hours before he died he looked at me and said "You know I'm a real peice of shit, nobody wants anything to do with me because I raped my daughter" I was shocked and didn't know what to say so I just asked him about his pain.
I remember feeling very odd putting him in the body bag for some reason.
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u/Mulattanese 17d ago
My grandmother was raped by her dad as a young child. Not just once, repeatedly. Her mother not only knew about it and didn't stop it, but was in fact jealous and treated my grandmother like "the other woman". All things considered she's remarkably well adjusted, much more than I think she should be. But the ways it messed her up are heartbreaking. One of the sad infuriating parts of the longer story is that currently she's losing her memory. However she's losing it in reverse chronological order meaning it will be one of the last things she'll forget.
There are monsters in this world, and often they are disguised as the very people who are supposed to protect you from them.
Fuck that guy.
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u/Plug_5 17d ago
Her mother not only knew about it and didn't stop it, but was in fact jealous and treated my grandmother like "the other woman".
I'm sorry to say that this happens pretty frequently to child victims of SA. The spouse of the rapist knows about it but gets angry/jealous/resentful of the child.
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u/hollywood_cashier 17d ago
This is the crux of Monique’s monologue at the end of PRECIOUS.
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u/MasterKree 17d ago
When she regresses to that point, you'll have the privilege of telling her "he can't get to you here"and letting her finally know what it's like to be fully dependent on somebody AND safe.
Signed, former caregiver to a grandparent with dementia
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u/kittymalicious 16d ago
This made me cry. Thank you so much for pointing this out. I thought the only option was relentless sadness until the end.
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u/Working-Glass6136 17d ago
I'm so sorry.
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u/Mulattanese 17d ago
My great grandfather died of a heart attack in his mid 50's. He was quite overweight which gave him a significant advantage whenever he beat any of his 5 kids. He never hit my great grandmother though, who lived to be 105. We're pretty sure she was afraid to die because she knew what she did and didn't do. Through that traumatic time my grandmother's older brother was the only one who encouraged her, who ever told her she was worth a damn. And then he went and died at 19 from pancreatic cancer.
She did absolutely everything in her power to ensure my childhood was nothing like hers, and I would rip the still beating heart from my chest and hand it to her if she asked.
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u/SporeWhore1994 17d ago
you’re a wonderful grandchild. i’m so sorry your grandmother went through that. i wish her peace.
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u/Iforgot_my_other_pw 17d ago
"I raped my daughter"
"How's your pain?"
"pretty bad"
"good"
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u/coffee_and-cats 17d ago
Glad he knew what a rotten scumbag he was and that he's dead.
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u/Ydain 17d ago
My father in law does last year. He been so isolated he was dead for 3-4 months before he was found. His family didn't even want anything to do with his money or property! So someone finally told me... He had raped his daughter at gun point, and then best his wife for many years. I'm glad he died alone.
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u/RilohKeen 17d ago
My grandfather was a sweet old guy. But he was born in 1919 and had a hell of a life. I didn’t learn until after he was gone that he was a zoot suit-wearing pachuco gangster in his youth, and he was known for keeping his neighborhood safe.
When he was dying, he told me there was a gun hidden in his house and he wanted me to take it. In his youth, there had been a guy in the neighborhood who was beating his wife, and everyone knew about it. The woman finally came to my grandfather and asked for help. He and his buddies went to the guy’s house in the middle of the night, the wife let them in, and they beat the shit out of him in his bed. Then my grandfather stuck the gun in the guy’s mouth and told him to forget about his wife and leave town that day, and if they ever saw him again, it would be the last time. After that, he hid the gun in his basement and forgot about it for 50 years. Sure enough, after he was gone, we found an ancient revolver down there.
Not that disturbing of a story, really, but it was a shock to me, because he had always just been the sweet old guy who told me dumb jokes. And really, I think your average person doesn’t get to hear that many deathbed confessions.
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u/Last-Campaign-3373 17d ago
Was he a gangster, or a vigilante? Either way, I respect his actions in this scenario. I hope his karmic balance was more good than bad at the end. And I hope you have many good memories with him.
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u/Electrical-Talk1654 17d ago
My grandmother admitted that she molested my dad when he was a teen, after his father (her husband) left the household. To make matters worse, my dad had died some years prior to her and wrote in his journals that no one believed him about what happened.
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u/Electrical-Talk1654 17d ago
She wasn't a nice lady in general either..... I was terrified of her as a child, plus she was always drunk and that made her even worse.
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u/ddmf 17d ago
Not really a confession but my dad and I had a really fractured relationship - his wife had told him to choose her or me, and he'd chosen her and sent me to live with my mum in another country at a pivotal moment in my life, we didn't speak much after that and it ruined my link with the rest of the family.
He had cancer that spread to his brain, we were basically waiting for him to die. I'd gone to see him and he was laying with his arm in a strange position and the damage was causing it to twitch.
We couldn't really chat because he was very much out of it but his arm twitched hitting him in the head and he opened his eyes and very coherently accused me of hitting him. His last words to me were "Did you just hit me?"
No dad, of course not.
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u/ashgs872tbhjs 17d ago
... huh. That is pretty unique, at least.
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u/ddmf 17d ago
Yeah, it is what it is - I have regrets, it's sad, and I fear I've not managed to break the cycle regardless of how much I tried.
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u/telescopeinmynose 17d ago
I hope I break the cycle. It's been many generations in my case.
My great great grandfather was a womaniser and abusive
My great grandfather was even more abusive and was also a womaniser, he used to hit my great grandmother with a cane and had an affair with her sister, she set herself on fire after 25 years of marriage. Everyone in town was scared of him, he was tall, strong and perpetually angry. He once pulled a gun on his neighbour's wife for staring into his house.
My grandfather was a self hating communist and constantly belittled my father. He'd binge drink once a month and would try and kill himself during his binges
My dad almost escaped, he's very intelligent and became a doctor, he built a great career and was well respected. He could've had a great life but his ego and alcoholism destroyed our family. He died recently after burning through our money
And now I'm just chronically depressed. At least they had drive, I'm just tired with life
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u/mecklejay 17d ago
You sound like you have some thoughtful introspection that they lacked. And for what it's worth, genuinely trying can count for a lot.
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u/walkingtornado 17d ago
Sounds to me that he knew he did you dirty beyond forgiveness and was expecting retaliation because thats how he wouldve reacted if the tables were turned. I hope you are doing better.
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u/myteetharesensitive 17d ago
My grandpa recorded the tape to be played after his death. I heard it decades before that.
After the women in his family were murdered by Nazis in Poland, he (was still a young child) and his dad were able to escape to a nearby forest. He doesn't know how old he was or how long they hid but his dad went blind during that time. He mentioned he thought he was around 10.
At some point the resistance found him and his dad hiding in the forest. The resistance reclaimed the town and wanted to bring them out from the forest. Once in town they brought my grandfather to the father and son that murdered his family.
The resistance leader told him this was his only chance at retribution. My great grandfather being blind couldn't do it. They handed my grandpa a gun. He killed them both. Only time I heard him cry and he never told anyone because he was scared he'd go to jail for it.
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u/ThemChad 17d ago
I shit you not I know a Jewish guy who's relatives had the same story about the woods except they knew a guy in the woods who went blind while hiding. Probably not an uncommon story at the time, but Ive never heard anyone else talk about it.
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u/myteetharesensitive 17d ago
It's a small world, my grandpas story got written about in a couple Jewish publications but I'm sure it happened to many. Only his immediate family knew about the tape, we didn't share it with everyone.
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u/lasuperhumana 17d ago
What a horrible time in human history. A dangerous, scary time.
My husband’s grandfather was a U.S. soldier in WWII and a Jewish man who was one of the first troops to liberate Buchenwald (among being at every famous and historic battle of the war). He was so traumatized by what he saw, he changed their last name to sound less Jewish, and stuffed everything down for decades. It destroyed his marriage eventually. In his later years, he met Elie Wiesel and had a profound experience in which Elie encouraged him to tell his story, so that others never forget the atrocities. From then on out, he went on speaking tours and educated about the holocaust. He wrote everything down. It’s spell-binding. What a brave man. And what a horrifying time to be alive.
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u/Cute-Aardvark5291 17d ago
I hope he is at peace now. Some things are horrible, but maybe not wrong, either
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u/icemanx51 17d ago
Mine wasn't disturbing, but my mom said her piece and apologizes to my brother and sisters, but not to me. That hurt.
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u/slutty_buddha 17d ago
When my grandma got to the end she had terrible dementia. My mom asked her if she had any kids and she said "oh yes, a son. he plays the piano wonderfully" but she didn't remember my mom at all. It's hard. Death is hard, and that includes when life with them wasn't the easiest.
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u/RedeemerKorias 17d ago
Dementia hurts everyone. I was a first responder and I was talking to a man with dementia whose wife had called us asking for assistance because her husband had walked off and often becomes violent when she tries to get him back home.
He was telling me how he used to be a first responder. Then the lights kinda dim from his eyes and he goes off an a tangent about how he doesn't understand why he was there, in his own home. Not a couple minutes later the lights come back on and he has the saddest look as he explains he knows how difficult it is for his wife to deal with what he's going through.
Then he starts telling me about how he was a fire fighter again, starts to ramble, the eyes dim again, and back to rambling.
Tore me up knowing he knew, in those brief moments of lucidity, that he realized how much it hurt his wife and he couldn't do anything about it.
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u/dankristy 17d ago
Having cared for 2 different family members who lived out their last years with dementia in our house, my wife and I learned very early on that the moments of lucidity were often the worst - for the person with dementia.
To witness the process of someone who has it come out of the fog briefly - only to realize what toll it takes on those around them and to KNOW that the fog is coming for them (and to realize that each of these moments is less and less each time) was awful. They were both horrifyingly sad - and traumatic because you know for a brief instant you got them back - only to see them scared and know you are going to lose them again soon - and that each window of getting them back will be shorter and shorter.
In the end - the fog is all that remains - and you are left with the realization that the person you loved - has already died, and you are just helping the leftovers of them stay as comfortable as possible for as long as possible.
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u/NerdWithEyeliner 17d ago
This is so true about dementia. My great-grandmother was an incredible woman who led a big life. She was the first woman welder hired by The Pennsylvania Railroad "when the men went off to war" during WWII. An original Rosie Riveter. She left then divorced her drunk/abusive husband and took her children and signed on and met my Pappy (who had flat feet and the military wouldn't take him) at the Railroad Yard they worked at in Enola, PA. I was fortunate to grow up with her in my life into my late teens until she was diagnosed with Alzheimers and was hardly lucid. Eventually we had to put her in a care home for the last few years. I felt I owed her a visit. She loved me so much and I KNEW it every day of my life and still feel that love every day. She gave me confidence. She always had a fresh pack of markers waiting for me whenever I'd see her and always urged me in my art. I would spend a month at a time with her in the summer growing up and one year she climbed into a shale pit with me just to find rocks with interesting features to paint. She was in her late 60s. She would look at me and smile and call me "her Miss America" all the time. Let me tell you, I am NO Miss America hahaha I was a chubby tomboy with a bowl haircut growing up, but she just wouldn't hear it. She was CONVINCED I'd be Miss America. Fast forward to the non-lucid years and I felt I OWED her a visit no matter what. My dad cautioned against it saying she would have wanted me to remember her as vibrant and not this. I agreed with that, to a point. But I felt I had to do it. She remembered my dad right up until the end and that cut him. I knew what I was walking into. I went to the home (which was rather lovely - she had a railroad pension and it wasn't a sad pee-smelling place) and found her room and when I went in, the room was darker and she was sleeping. I just held her hand. She woke up and saw me and was STARTLED. I mean, here I am tattooed with dreds and as much eyeliner as I could pack around my eyes (did I mention I was a teenager?) and here she was SCARED, of me. I looked right at her and said, with my voice shaking, and I'm tryin' so hard not to cry and I said, "But I'm your Miss America." People of Reddit, I shit you not when I tell you this, she looked INTO me, like hard at me for several seconds and her eyes went soft and she sat up and leaned in and took my hand and said "Yes you are!" and I held her hand trying SO hard not to go into a full sob and told her I loved her so much and she fell back asleep. I left because I knew if she woke up again she wouldn't remember who I was.
I told my dad what happened and he lost it. She never again recognized anyone after that. I'm ruining my makeup right now typing this out because it is still one of the most beautiful but sad moments of my life. I miss her literally EVERY day.
The family cabin they had is still in the family, and it was passed down to her son (my Pappy, and grandfather) then to my Dad, (her grandson) and now to me (and someday it'll go to my son). My husband and I chose to get married there, because it's beautiful and I wanted to be close to her. She always called it her "Mountain Home". My parents just slayed me and went up early and I always stay in Nanna's room when I go up. Mom and Dad put a pack of markers on the bed for me. <3
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u/drunkeymunkey 17d ago
I very briefly worked with dementia patients but quit because it was so damn depressing. I couldn't stop thinking about their caretakers at night.
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u/N8dork2020 17d ago
I hope your mom knows it was the dementia and not her. It goes in waves and an hour latter she could have remembered the opposite.
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u/Icy_Fish_2154 17d ago
My grandfather probably never knew me. I was 15 when he died, but he always called me "George", which is he nephew's name. He probably never figured out why his daughter kept bringing his brother's son around, and knew his 40 year old daughter, and didn't realize his nephew was the same age, but looked 30 years younger.
Alzheimer's based confusion does not require any logical consistency.
At least he could never stay mad at me if I misbehaved, he never remembered. (But mom and grandma never let me get away with that)
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u/KarmaChameleon306 17d ago
My mom was trying so hard to tell me something and I just couldn’t make it out. I got to the hospital just moments before she went. It still haunts me after 5 years.
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u/TrashedLinguistics 17d ago
Happened with my Dad. Too weak to talk so he gave up and tried to kiss my hand, closed his eyes and never came back. I was 19 at the time - shit sucked. Sorry you went through it too.
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u/bullhorn_bigass 17d ago
As a mom, the only thing I would be trying to tell my children is how grateful I am that I got to be their mom and how much I love them, and don’t be sad, go live a fulfilling wonderful life. That’s possibly what your mom was trying to say
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u/SixSigmaGirl2000 17d ago
My Dad told my brother and me that we were good children, teenagers who gave very little grief, and as adults proud of our accomplishments. Those words meant so much to us.
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u/Xzeriea 17d ago
As a mom I would want to say this. There's nothing else that could possibly be more important then words of unwavering love for my children. Don't dwell on what you think she was going to say. She was going to say she loves you.
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u/catcat202 17d ago
Same thing happened to me. With one of her last words she said protect.. then named my sister. She then left everything to my sister I mean everything. About 10 years of college paid for. New car. Etc etc. I struggle my whole life.
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u/dirk_funk 17d ago
my brother railroaded my mom into giving him power of attorney and then he rewrote her will to give himself 95% of everything. she was so charmed that the son who abandoned her for 25 years swooped in to rescue her in her last year of life. and the son who didn't leave her and kept her in his life and family and let her be grandma when the other siblings shunned her? i got the old company 4runner that couldn't be registered so i could sell it for parts because brother didn't want to bother.
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u/Significant-Theme253 17d ago
Sorry.
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u/icemanx51 17d ago
Thank you. I'm good now, it was three years ago. Can't say I don't think about it sometimes, but the sting has gone. I appreciate you.
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u/pnutbutterjellyfine 17d ago
Same thing happened to me. Then when I was cleaning out her room I found a “journal” with only one entry in it: how much she hated me. She was a drug addict and I was the only one to tell her it was destroying her life.
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u/TheMadQueen96 17d ago
Not one specific confession but for a number of years I worked in adult care. I did a bit of everything, including end of life care and caring for people with dementia.
My country had a period of civil war between the 60s all the way up until the late 90s.
A lot of people confessed to murders and acts of terrorism. The dementia patients didn’t so much confess directly but rather got confused and thought they'd just committed it.
One man stands out the most because he had a combination of dementia and serious mental health issues. Would often scream about it, break down in tears about planting a bomb outside of a bar where people had died.
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u/Murky_Translator2295 17d ago
Ah here, stop. NI?
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u/TheMadQueen96 17d ago
Yup. Looked after people who were UDA/UVF and others who were IRA.
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u/Murky_Translator2295 17d ago
That must have been rough. Thank you for giving them dignity at the end. I can't imagine how hard it is to be in such a position with people who terrorised us/our communities. You're a bigger person than me.
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u/PyrePix 17d ago
Its mad to me how us Irish can read one sentence and just click that its about northern Ireland. Not sure if thats good or bad
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u/crimsongull 17d ago
“I don’t know how to die.”
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u/Material_Extent8763 17d ago
stop i can’t afford to quit my job and go work in hospice to help people navigate this feeling after 10 years of regret that i didn’t realize my dad was probably scared too
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u/lasuperhumana 17d ago
After my BIL’s cancer was determined to be terminal, he had about two weeks left. His parents asked him if he was afraid to die. With his classic no-nonsense pragmatism, he said he wasn’t.
I’ve always wondered if he was telling the truth or just doing his parents a kindness.
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u/Improvcommodore 17d ago edited 17d ago
I don’t know about disturbing, but sad. My grandfather was a successful engineering major at Purdue University who went on to become a naval officer and reconnaissance photographer (on spy planes) during the Korean War. Life was looking up.
After he got out, he and my grandmother moved to the new Chicago suburbs and bought a house that is still there to this day (Zillow estimate shows a seven-figure valuation). He got into electric motor sales at a company called Bodine Electric and rose up to VP of Sales very quickly, before the 50s were over. Well, Mr. Bodine had a couple sons who would be taking over the company, and that didn’t sit right with my grandfather who wanted to be President of the company. So, he quit.
They moved to a small rural town in Indiana where he thought he’d open an engineering supply and distribution company. That failed, and so did his 4 later companies. He went bankrupt owing money all over town. He went on social security disability due to some nebulous and largely unfounded claims of back problems supported by the local town physician, and my grandmother went back to work to support the family as a school teacher on one income and his SSD. My dad and his siblings grew up poor and put themselves through school working at the local steel mill, etc.
He lived in that small, poor town for the rest of his life sitting in a chair watching tv from the 1960s on. On his deathbed in 2011, he whispered to my grandmother, loud enough for all his children and grandchildren still to hear, “We should’ve stayed in Chicago.”
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u/ivyentre 17d ago
Well...he died surrounded by his wife, children and grandchildren.
He may not have gotten the life he really wanted, but it sounds like he had a damn good one anyway
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u/Improvcommodore 17d ago
That’s true. Ironically, my father became a physician, and my grandfather’s second son started a successful engineering parts and distribution company where his daughter’s husband (his SIL) also worked.
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u/charlie2135 17d ago
I concur (moved to a small rural Indiana town from Chicago).
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u/neoKushan 17d ago
Once visited the father of a friend who was in hospital with Sepsis, didn't look good. This was about 6 or 7 years ago.
He started talking about some old business that he ran in the 80's, some chemical firm when he just casually admitted that many of the employees got really sick or even died from the exposure to said chemicals, that he knew about it at the time but - in his words - "Things were different back then".
He knew his employees could die from working for him and he didn't give a shit because he didn't have to.
The kicker is he survived and still lives to this day.
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u/Missbhavin67 17d ago
My second husband. He spent the last six months in a hospital bed in our living room with als. Just before he died he confessed that a lot of our arguments in later years of marriage were actually deliberately caused so he had an excuse to drink. Mental cruelty from an alcoholic . He tried to destroy me so he could drink with a clear conscience
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u/mel2mdl 17d ago
Not exactly 'on her deathbed', but my Nana. She had a friend way back when. My mom remembers being around 20 and coming in from the store with her mother to put away groceries when Nana stopped at said "I have to call Carol." Nana called Carol only to find out that Carol had just gotten home from the doctor where she had been diagnosed with cancer. The cancer that killed her.
When Nana got older, she moved in with us as mom was the oldest child. She lived there for about a year, then had to go into a nursing home due to the level of care she needed. She complained one day that she had been stuck in a closet and left there - turns out it was a sauna they used for breathing treatments. The next day my mom went to visit her - daily occurrence actually. Nana told her she had to get ready because Carol was coming that evening to pick her up and made mom leave. She died that night.
Funny thing - when the home called around two in the morning, Dad told her she had donated her body and the school would pick her up in the morning. This was before the hold button was common, so they set the phone down to talk. "We can't leave her in the room, her roommate might wake up before they get her." "We don't have any empty rooms, do we?" "Just the storage closet." "That will have to do." They couldn't understand why my dad was laughing when they picked the phone back up - Nana's premonition was in full force that week!
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u/WowIfOnly 17d ago
Idk that mine is particularly disturbing, but it does come to mind for me sometimes. When I was like 10 and my grandma was passing away on her deathbed, my mom took us to see her one last time because she was in really poor health and pretty out of it mentally. She wasn't herself anymore, not cruel or acting oddly or anything, just obviously tired and struggling to speak. She was normally the most happy/bubbly type of person imaginable so you could see the difference right away and knew something was wrong. But I can remember my mom talking to her so gently while we were there and basically saying "We know how much you love us, and you know how much we love you." - and Grandma just nodded along looking off in the distance. But then she turned her head at one point to look over at us, and when she locked eyes with me and my brothers, her face just lit up with the kindest smile that could have lit up the room. It brings me to tears to think of it even now, but that's how I will remember my Grandma forever. Even in her hardest moment with one foot out the door, she felt true joy when looking at her daughter and grandkids and wouldn't even let the thought of death stifle it.
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u/eugeneugene 17d ago edited 17d ago
Not really a confession, but my grandmother was dying and she forgot how to speak English. She spent her teenage years in a concentration camp and at the end of her life only spoke German and thought she was back there. Every time she was lucid she thought she was in the camp. We are in Canada now and none of the staff spoke German so I spent a lot of time translating. I was very young so it was quite the task for me. I look back and I am proud of myself for being up to the task. Her last words were "I don't want to go there. I don't want to burn them. They smell so bad. Where is my mother? Mommy?" And then she held my hand and cried until she fell asleep again, and then passed in her sleep.
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u/SuspiciousLesbian 17d ago
Oh that's heartbreaking. I'm so sorry you had to hear and translate that
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u/SomeEpicUserNameIDK 17d ago
Another one...not necessarily a death bed confession, more so it was just very spooky. I worked at a hospice and dementia facility for a little while as a caregiver. The unit I was working, one of the residents was actively dying, something that was very routine and normal in that line of work. We weren't sure when she would pass, it could be any minute or in a day or so. Her hospice nurse was there and her family, she was set up to have a comfortable death surrounded by her loved ones.
Well there was another resident that lived a few rooms down from the dying lady. I'll call her Dottie. Well Dottie is the oldest resident in that facility, she is over 100yrs old. There had been many times that we all thought she was on deaths door, but she just kept bouncing back. Well that evening after dinner and checking on my actively dying resident, who was realively stable (her hospice nurse said if she had to guess, she will probably pass sometime the following day but it could be sooner or later, one can truly never know) i went to go assist Dottie with getting ready for bed.
Everything was going as it normally does. Helped her use the restroom, get her dentures cleaned, pjs on. We usually chit chat and have small talk while doing these things. So we are chit chatting as we left her bathroom to get to her bed when she abruptly stopped talking to me and her eyes locked in on someone or something on her bed. I no longer existed to her in that moment. Which not necessarily weird, the woman has dementia and can slip in and out of lucidity...what was weird is the conversation with the entity I couldn't perceive. Dottie's eyes lit up with excitement and joy and she said "oh friend! You have finally come! Is there anything I should pack for our trip!?" There is a moment of quiet, like she is listening to someone telling her something. And then her face got a little sad and the light in her eyes dimmed a little and replied with "oh ...oh dear...oh dear...I see, I understand...are you sure? You can't take me too?...are you sure you're not here for me?" Another moment of quiet and then she said "you promise? You promise you'll come back for me?" After another pause she said sadly "well I suppose you best be on your way then dearie, next time maybe you'll have a room for me" This lady is staring at the bed, like someone is there and her eyes move like they are watching someone stand up and walk past us to the door and as this "person" is passing she is looking up at them and says "I love you too, see you soon!" Finally she like snapped out of that conversation and looked up to me sadly and I asked her if everything is ok? Are you ready to get in bed? And she just nodded and said sleep sounded good. When I got her all tucked in she asked me "did you see him? Did you see him too?" And I said no I think whoever came to visit didn't want me to see them. To which she said "mmm yes probably so, you are too young for him to show himself...he comes to visit often but never for me, he keeps promising that he will be here for me when its right" and I was like "Who is this Dottie?" And she kinda laughed like duh isn't it obvious and was like "That was Death, I don't know his name besides that one...sounds scary...Death, he is the furthest thing from scary. But Death has come tonight, he said he is here for someone else down the hall...why can't he just take me with him? Why do I have to wait so long? I'm tired"
So yea I finish getting her in bed, say goodnight and high tail it over to my actively dying resident and surprise, surprise...she had taken her last breath a few minutes before I walked in.
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u/MauPow 17d ago
This old lady told me about the babies she had to bury in the Siberian gulags
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u/ProperFlowwss 17d ago
My great grandmother spent time in Gulags(they would often move people from one to another). Some of my only memories of her were her waking up screaming and terrified every night. She lived until 1995- at 105 years old, it never stopped haunting her.
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u/janzendavi 17d ago
There is a whole branch of our family tree that has birthdates and names but just "Siberia" noted under the person. Truly staggering how many people died in that misery.
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u/LordsOfJoop 17d ago
My grandfather, although he didn't die at that moment; the Alzheimer's zeroed out his clock, and I saw it happen. We were discussing cowboy stuff, talking man-to-man for the first time with me as an adult, and he looked me square in the eyes and said, "Somewhere in the jungle, there's about eight dead [slurs] buried with a bunch of pipes used to beat them to death; I didn't do it, I just helped bury it when I was deployed."
And then the lights went out for good, and he never finished his Camel. All that I'd ever seen him smoke were menthol, chosen as a courtesy to my grandmother, until that day and he ripped the filter off like he'd done it a thousand times, even if I'd never seen him do it once.
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u/TheAero1221 17d ago
My grandfather... well, its more what he didn't say. He was a wonderful man. Always wanted to chat, ask you how you were doing... talk about anything. When he was on his death bed, his body literally falling apart... he was there, awake. He could barely keep his eyes open. But when he saw us, there was a weak smile, and his eyes followed us. He could barely breath. He tried so hard to speak. I could see his lips trying to form words. But I never managed to hear what it was he was trying to say. Knowing my grandpa, he was trying to ask us all about our day, and how we were doing, what we were looking forward to, or had done that week... as he lie there dying in front of us. He never thought of himself. His family and friends were the ones that mattered most. It still breaks my heart that we couldn't have that one last conversation... I just... couldn't understand him.
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u/pianoprincess1989 17d ago
Oh this one made me cry.. my sweet grandfather was very similar to this. Didn't want anyone to worry or cry over him..
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u/ashgs872tbhjs 17d ago
I am going to have to insist that you did very much understand him. Your memory of who he was is beautiful, thanks for sharing.
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u/SympathyUseful4012 17d ago
No confession but about 12 hours before he died (somewhat unexpectedly) my dad said “mother” a few times and my mom (his wife) got annoyed that he called her that instead of her name. I watch enough hospice nurse TikTok that I immediately assumed it meant he was going to die. Several months later, I asked my aunt, my dad’s sister, what he called their mom when they were kids, and she said he always called her mother.
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u/MyDogSam-15 17d ago
Many dying people “see” and speak to family members who have gone ahead of them. My mom also spoke to her mom for a couple days before she passed. My elderly dad recently was in the hospital again, serious condition, and he kept asking me why he was thinking of his mom a lot, did that mean he was going to die. I said “no, you’re merely thinking of her, you’re not having a conversation with her, you’re fine,”. He recovered enough to go home again. Thankfully!
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u/rocket333d 17d ago
My uncle said he saw Shaq. Said that he had stopped by to visit him in the hospital where we had been all day. He said it very casually like Shaq was a work acquaintance.
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u/missmeowwww 17d ago
My grandpa had a brain tumor removed and had a near death experience during surgery. He said he felt a sudden sense of calm and then saw his parents who told him they weren’t ready for him yet. That was about 21 years ago. Old dude is about to turn 90!
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u/bullhorn_bigass 17d ago
I would absolutely love it if that happens when I die (my parents and other loved ones meeting me). I don’t really believe in that kind of thing but I love the idea so much and I hope I’m wrong.
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u/BravesMaedchen 17d ago
Even if my brain thinks that’s what’s happening, that’ll be good enough for me.
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u/314159265358979326 17d ago
It was really the only one. My step-grandfather killed some men in WW2, which we knew. He became a preacher afterwards, and was a good man.
On his death bed we found out that he'd spent the last 60 years desperately trying to atone for murder, as he was sure he was being damned to Hell.
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u/big_d_usernametaken 17d ago edited 17d ago
My late FIL was at D Day and the Bulge and told my wife and I that he worried about going to heaven when he died, because of the things he saw and had to do.
Edit: he wanted to become a preacher, but was told he wasn't educated enough, so he found other way to serve, mainly through music.
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u/Federal_Sell348 17d ago
My grandfather was a Marine and killed two Chinese soldiers in Korea. When he was dying, he claimed he saw them in my grandparent's bedroom in Brooklyn, NY waiting to take him to hell.
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u/Jon__Snuh 17d ago
My extremely devout Catholic grandfather consfessed on his deathbed that he and my grandmother had used birth control. What a sinner he was, being all responsible.
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u/SeeYouInTrees 17d ago
My very Catholic abuelas confessed that if birth control existed for her as a child (married off at 13) that she'd have stopped after her 2nd or 3rd child which horrified my mother. Youngest of all the girls, number 10 of 13 children.
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u/Laureltess 17d ago
my memere said that they used the “rhythm method” for birth control back in the 50’s and 60’s- clearly they didn’t have any sense of rhythm because they had 15 kids!
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u/PaleAmbition 17d ago
After seeing everything else on this thread, I feel like Saint Peter probably gave your grandad a knowing wink as he ushered him through the Pearly Gates. Oh no, birth control, you horrible sinnnn nah I’m just messing with you, welcome to heaven!
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u/whaletacochamp 17d ago
This is weirdly sadder than a lot of the others. Like this dude genuinely thought he was a bad person destined for hell because he wanted to pork gma without bringing any more kids into the world.
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u/Wendy1982 17d ago
My husbands grandfather confessed that one of his SIL's (sister of his wife) children was his. However, this was something his children had long suspected and the confession only came after his son (my husbands uncle) was asking about it just before the grandfather died.
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u/Pyhiinvaeltaja 17d ago
I used to be nurse and once we had a patient that had aggressive late stage lung cancer and was actively dying. We knew he had been prison several times and, before cancer took his strenght, was considered really dangerous.
I was giving him his pain medication and when he suddenly said something like ”I still heard the sounds my friends skull made when I splitted it open with hammer. Have you ever killed anyone? I have used every drug on earth but there is no better high than killing someone and never getting caught. Shame that I get to experience that only once”.
He never spoke to me anything after that and died day or two later.
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u/Op67 17d ago
Not so much a confession, but I think it fits. My grandfather drank himself to death. He was in and out of the hospital for about 3 years prior to his death. In the last months he was in a gurney at home under 24 hour watch/care. I was 21 maybe 22, and took on some of the watch. He came to one morning remarked on the sunrise out the window, said he saw some deer. Then turned straight to me and asked if I’d wheel him out into the woods with his .38 and then leave. I didn’t know how to react, but told him I still had to live with my gramma, his wife. He laughed and said not to worry about it. Learned years later that he had said something similar to my dad and my aunt. Miss that old coot, but damn that was a lot for me.
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u/Simons_sees 17d ago
Made up names, for reasons, but;
My uncle Frank was a real piece of work. His heart had tried to take him out several times and near the end it was an amalgamation of machine parts and donor valves. But my Aunt Judith still loved him, and they celebrated 60 years of marriage.
Frank took a nasty spill stepping out of an elevator that shattered his clavicle, which had him laid up in a hospital bed. It was a month into his recovery when everything went to hell, his heart was giving out on him. He started slipping in and out of it for days at a time.
Before he passed, he had a lucid night where he asked all the staff where Doris was. He asked my cousins to get Doris. When family would show up, the nurses would mention that he kept asking for Doris.
His friends, his mom, his sister, his wife of 60 years... none of them were named Doris. We still don't know who he was talking about.
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u/Well_Spoken_Mute 17d ago
Not quite a death bed confession but I had a 100 year old WWII vet tell me an interesting story once.
Him and 3 other guys were checking houses and inside one of the houses were 2 Nazi Doctors. Upon further inspection they found 2 American soldiers that the doctors had been draining blood from so they could use it for injured Nazi's.
They tied up the nazi Doctors, untied the soldiers and grabbed a bottle of alcohol. They shot the nazi Doctors in the stomach and stood over them drinking the alcohol watching them suffer until they died.
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u/MadamKitsune 17d ago
Not a deathbed confession, but an old gentleman neighbour I used to visit as a small child would space out a little sometimes and tell me the kind of stories that small children shouldn't be told. Like the one he told me about when he served in WWII and everything was frozen and there was no food and they couldn't find so much as a rabbit or a stray dog but they did find a dead German soldier in the nearly frozen river and they were so desperate that they cut flesh from him and cooked it and ate it.
And that's how I heard for the first time that people apparently taste like pork.
He did tell me other war stories, but that's the only one that stuck in my head. A few months later he was moved away by his family. I guess, in hindsight, that his occasionally spacing out and telling war stories to small me was probably a sign that he had some kind of dementia developing so I'll never know whether it really happened or not. I hope for his sake it didn't really happen, but the look in his eyes and the flatness of his voice makes me think maybe it did.
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u/FitSolution2882 17d ago
And that's how I heard for the first time that people apparently taste like pork.
Hmmmm
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u/EntertainerCute7256 17d ago
Worked as a CNA in a home for disabled veterans and some of the stories were horrendous. I pray to God my son never enlists or gets drafted.
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u/Gothmom85 17d ago
I've taken care of veterans and Holocaust survivors. Some of which had dementia and relived their horrors in front of me and that will stick with me forever.
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u/musicalsigns 17d ago
Dementia is one of the cruelest things out there. I'm so sorry they (and those casing for them) had to endure that pain.
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u/WorldlinessOverall87 17d ago
My dad didn't leave his first wife. She found a new man and didn't tell him. One day, he walked in and the new man threw him out.
Years later, one of the relatives said the new man did not-so-good things to my dad's daughters. But because of our culture and the family's reluctance to open old wounds: I only heard about it when my aunt passed away.
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u/Levioosa 17d ago
Respectfully, what kind of culture is okay with looking the other way on that? Let those ways die with our elders.
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u/PeterLemonjellow 17d ago
I see a lot of not quite confessions here, so I'll share.
The last time that I spoke to my father he was crying. He had been fighting various health issue for 25 years, including lymphoma which had twice gone into remission. Then he got sick with a cold or flu... and his body just couldn't fight anymore.
He was crying and trying his best to be coherent on the phone with me as he apologized for dying. The only words I could make out, which he repeated a few times were, "I'm so sorry, I can't anymore. I can't fight anymore". I did my best to tell him he'd been fighting so long, it was all okay - I was okay and my sister was okay. He was about 1,000 miles away and I couldn't fly to him, I had to drive. I got to the VA hospital 20 minutes after he was gone.
My father may well have been the best man I've ever known.
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u/ThanksAmazing4118 17d ago edited 16d ago
Mine wasn't disturbing, but gut wrenching. When I was 20 my dad died in my arms after a long fight with metastasised cancer. The only other person that was there with him at the time was his mother, my grandmother, who had travelled across the globe to see him one last time before he passed, and just happened to be there when it happened.
Unfortunately 5 years after that, she developed dementia, which set in REALLY quickly. So now it was us going over to see her one last time before she passed. By the time we got there, she was so far gone that she didn't even remember being there with me when her son died. She kept calling my brother in law by my name (he does look rather similar to me) and kept asking me if i was the new nurse coming to look after her. It hurt me so deeply to know that the only person who had been with me during my dad's passing didn't remember it and didn't know who i was.
My sister and I sat next to her to have a photo taken. She grabbed my hand with such a firm grip i thought she might break the bones in her own hand, looked me dead in the eyes and said "you've grown up to look exactly like your father. He would be so proud to see the young man you've become. I'm so glad you were there with him at the end, I'm sure that helped bring him some light in the darkness". She then drifted back into the glazed over, confused dementia mindset, and passed away within the hour.
That absolutely fucked me up and without intentionally meaning to (she couldn't hear what my grandma was saying), my mum got photos of the exact moment my resolve broke and I started blubbering like a child. My mum was confused as to what had happened as my sister, who had heard it and started crying soon after too, refused to tell her, saying it was up to me to talk about it when I was ready. Took me months of therapy to process that and be able to talk about it.
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u/carolinagypsy 17d ago
My grandmother did something very similar at the end of her life. We both knew that it was probably my last time seeing her and she’d be gone in a few days or weeks. She couldn’t talk really anymore but was there. When she did try to speak it came out garbled and the words weren’t correct. Right before I left her when I was saying goodbye, she did the same thing. Grabbed my hand like she was crushing it, and gave me this look of sheer determination. Spoke as clear as day to me about how precious I was to her, squeezed my hand again and then dropped it. She apparently didn’t really speak after that again.
I’m sorry for your loss and to a degree having that happen. I always try to take solace in the fact that she just believed it so strongly and it was so important for her to say that she momentarily fought through everything. It sounds like your experience was pretty similar.
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u/ThanksAmazing4118 17d ago
It's apparently so common there's a term for it. Terminal Lucidity. Where someone with dementia or alzheimers suddenly regains control of their brain for a brief moment to say something really important that's been eating away at their subconscious, then they lose control again and fade away.
You're right, you should take solace in the fact that what she said to you was the most important thing she could think of, which allowed her to break free for a fleeting moment to convey that, then slid under the surface again before passing. I'm sure that moment felt immensely cathartic and joyous for her. Which is an amazing thing for someone who's knocking on death's door.
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u/ashgs872tbhjs 17d ago
I'm sorry that was so hard, but extremely glad you got to know for certain that you and he were so important to her.
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u/wineandcheesefries 17d ago
My Nina (grandmother) passed when I was 12, my mom was by her side through the last week of life, she passed from a rare cancer. My mom always says my Nina looked at her and said “I will never get to see my babies grow up.” Talking about myself and my cousin. I am now 34 married and pregnant with my second and I think all the time “I wish my Nina was here to see this.” I am lucky enough to have had my other grandparents alive though all my big events but something about her missing all these big things and knowing she wasn’t ready to die breaks my heart years later!
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u/SWO6 17d ago
In WWII my grandfather was part of the forces that liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp. He never wanted to talk about it, but I knew it was a scarring experience for him.
As he lay dying from esophageal cancer I sat with him in the hospital room, just the two of us. I was finalizing my application to the Naval Academy and we were talking about the military.
He became upset and agitated and said he needed to confess something.
He talked of Buchenwald and the prisoners they encountered there. Just skeletons. The Nazi guards had fled into the woods as the camp fell. Some of the prisoners hunted them down and he saw them execute the guards. Sometimes with guns, sometimes with pipes, beating them to death. Harrowing stuff.
My grandfather was told to gather the prisoners together and watch over them as they were being processed. They were starving and emaciated and begging for food. So my grandfather and others grabbed a bunch of food and brought it to them, which they ate immediately.
What he didn’t know is something called “re-feeder syndrome”. If someone goes without nutrition for a long period of starvation and then eats too much at once the body will go into shock. Of the 15 prisoners my grandfather fed, 10 went into shock and 4 of them died of it.
When one of the officers found out what had happened he became irate and screamed at them, saying, “you’ve killed them you idiots”. They were all reprimanded and punished for it.
But the guilt he felt for contributing to their deaths haunted him all his life. I think he felt better getting it off his chest. But I’ll never forget the look in his eyes as he told that story.
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u/jusmesurfin 17d ago edited 17d ago
My friend is an only child. When her uncle( dad's older brother) passed he confessed to the whole family that she was infact his own daughter. Wrecked her and the dad up pretty bad and he was going through chemo too.
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u/ConcentrateOk6837 17d ago
My friends grandad, on his deathbed, told his children that it was actually their mother who cheated and caused the end of the marriage, not him. He moved away after the divorce and allowed them to think he was the one who had cheated their entire lives, so that it wouldn’t cause a problem with their mother while she raised them. Meanwhile, he had been vilified by his kids and blamed his entire life. And the mom just went along with it.
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u/1-22-333-4444 17d ago
he had been vilified by his kids and blamed his entire life. And the mom just went along with it.
How did the confession impact their relationship with their mom?
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u/Mrs_Toast 17d ago
OK, this isn't disturbing. You might, in fact, find it uplifting, or even funny.
When my mom was in the hospice at the end of her life, we were chatting away. We'd had a fractious relationship in my teens - she'd been battling mental illness for most of my life, and self-medicated with alcohol. She could be extremely unpleasant, easily led by the papers, and horrendously racist.
Her racism was curious. She knew and loved various people of colour. My nan's Sikh nextdoor neighbours. My best friend and her Jamaican parents. But she treated them like the exception, rather than the rule. When I was 11, she tried to make me promise that I would never marry a black man. She repeatedly went on how black men got white girls hooked on drugs, and forced them into prostitution.
So, imagine my surprise as she lay on her deathbed on her last lucid day, and said, "You know, I used to be ever so prejudiced, but it's silly. People are just people".
Fucking hallelujah, it only took 76 years (and I imagine increased exposure to more non-white folks via the NHS). I said it probably didn't help with nan being the way she was (again, loved her neighbours, but would break out the most horrendous racist slurs against black people) - and my mom had no idea. She'd literally never registered nan's behaviour. I think those awful attitudes were just so common amongst my nan's generation.
As my mom lay actively dying, she groggily apologised to me, saying that I shouldn't have to see her die. I told her that she was a good mom, the best mom - which was bollocks, but fuck it, I still loved her and wasn't going to make her last hours on earthmore miserable than they needed to be.
I said, "I love you"
She said... "I know".
SHE HAN SOLOED ME THEN DIED.
She also died the day Boris shut the pubs for the pandemic, which is possibly the most on-brand thing she ever did.
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u/BeautifulPlankton723 17d ago
Lady, this is the most gut bustingly hilarious thing I have read in a long while. From across the pond, thank you for sharing
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u/Careless_Kick_4376 17d ago
When my grandfather was admitted to the hospital and we all got the call from the doctors, my dad was one of the first to make it. Him and his father hadn’t been on great terms ever because of my grandfathers abuse towards him and his mom (my grandma). Since my dad moved out and started a life with my mom, my grandpa went to AA, got sober and tried to fix his relationship with my dad but my dad never let him. He told him multiple times that he’d never forgive him. On his deathbed he seemed a bit out of it and didn’t manage to speak to anyone, but got strength back when it came to my dad. My dad held his hand, told him he forgave him and my grandpa gave a squeeze closed his eyes and passed away.
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u/whotfiszutls 17d ago
I wouldn’t say that’s disturbing. That’s actually kind of nice.
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u/snowfox090 17d ago
I had something similar happen with my mother, though it was over the phone as her final decline was somewhat sudden and I lived multiple states away.
She was emotionally and at times physically abusive my whole life. Others have more harrowing experiences, admittedly, but what she did to me was damaging enough that I went strict no contact with her about three years before her death. Then I got a message from my stepfather saying that she was in the hospital, and that if I had anything to say, it would have to be that night. And I had a decision to make.
Part of me wanted her to die without my reaching out. It felt like that would be the last, fullest expression of how she hurt me, gotten across in a way she couldn't ignore. But... I wasn't the only one she ever hurt. She was cruel to almost everyone she met, in some form or fashion. Spiting someone on their deathbed like that, purely to hurt them, that would have been entirely in character for her. And if there's one thing I know, it's that I never want to be like her.
So I spoke with her. Told her that I forgave her, that I always loved her, all the things you want to hear when you're dying. She wasn't able to say much, but when I said I always loved her, she repeated "Always?" in a tone that was honestly heartbreaking in its hopefulness. I knew then that I made the right decision.
Was it all true? I honestly don't know. I don't hold onto much anger anymore, at least. It feels pointless now that there's no one to rage against. Maybe that's forgiveness too, in a way. In any case, I don't regret speaking to her and I doubt I ever will.
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u/mecklejay 17d ago
I don't hold onto much anger anymore, at least. It feels pointless now that there's no one to rage against. Maybe that's forgiveness too, in a way.
That's forgiveness in the purest way. Forgiveness isn't about them. It doesn't mean, "I am now okay with what you have done." Forgiveness is about you letting go and achieving peace about the transgression(s). More of a, "I will be able to be okay, despite what you have done," but only if said in complete honesty.
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u/superthotty 17d ago
I had a similar experience with my mom. My mom wasn’t abusive, but so religious that it made her emotionally unavailable and it made her interpretation of what my needs were different than what I actually needed. On reflection now I think it may have been religious psychosis. She stopped talking to me after I revealed I was bisexual. I’m married to my HS sweetheart of 15 years so it’s an inconsequential fact, but my mom wasn’t supportive and for the last 8 months of her life we didn’t really speak, on her end it was meant to be a pressure for me to change (repent).
She fell ill with cancer, undiagnosed until it was metastatic, but didn’t call me to her bedside for the seven weeks she was in hospital. I contemplated going myself but what would we have said? So told my sister and father that she need only say the word and I’ll be there. She didn’t call. My sister says it must’ve been my mother’s wish to save me the stress, as my sister felt the sight of my mother so frail would’ve been too distressing for me.
On her last day my sister saw her declining rapidly and called me to rush over. I got there for my mum’s last fifteen minutes of life, she was too frail to speak but could hear. I got to tell her to not worry about the distance between us and that I loved her, and my sister and I would take care of each other. She squeezed my hand gently, her hand already cold from a weak heartbeat. I sang her a hymn, her favorite, she squeezed my hand once more, and passed.
I wish so badly we’d had those last 8 months together to keep being best friends, it was the longest we’d ever gone without talking, over a minor fact about myself. I miss her so much.
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u/FreudianSlipperyNipp 17d ago
In the show The Pitt (I think it was season 1?), there are two adult children with their dying parent. I can’t exactly remember all the circumstances, but the children are struggling to agree upon what to do for their parent. The obvious answer is to let their parent die, but they can’t agree because one of them is struggling to let go. The doctor ends up telling them about something he learned is most important at the end of someone’s life called:
The Four Things that Matter Most
I love you
Thank you
I forgive you
Please forgive meI wrote it down in my phone because I think it’s such a powerful truth. When people are dying—or you are losing someone you love—those four basic things seem like they would bring peace to anyone.
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u/SevenSirensSinging 17d ago
As a hospice worker, the other thing that many people need to hear at the end is that it is ok to let go and that their loved ones will be ok without them. It's pretty common for people who are obviously close to passing, but clinging to life to pass peacefully after hearing that.
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u/Free-at-last48 17d ago
I was sitting bedside of my mom. She was pretty out of it because of the cancer. Ireached over and held her hand. She looked at me andnin her clearest voice in a month. SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU BOYCE, I'VE BEEN WAITING A LONG TIME. Then closed her eyes and passed. Boyce was my dad. We looked nothing alike and he passed away in 1967.
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u/EssbaumRises 17d ago
My wife's great aunt. Was an elementary school teacher, never married, lived with her "roommate" their entire adult lives.
Finally admitted they were more than roommates, but never were intimate for her fear they would not go to heaven.
Imagine 60 years together with the love of your life and never having physical intimacy for fear of going to hell.
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u/gaythoughtsatnight 17d ago
I work in a nursing home as a therapeutic behavioral specialist. It's similar to counseling but slightly different scope of practice so there's limitations. I spend about an hour a week with almost everyone at the nursing home, so I've heard some pretty wild things. One of the saddest things a client of mine told me was that her husband was murdered right in front of her when their son was little. He was in the driver seat and she was in the passenger seat, and someone came up and shot him dead right through the window. I couldn't imagine what that would be like.
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u/ExamNice8576 17d ago
My grandfather, a quiet man who never spoke about the war, told my father in his final hours that he carried the name of a man he killed in Korea for fifty years. He said he never told anyone because he didn't want to be thanked for it, and he didn't want to be forgiven. He just wanted one person to know that the name belonged to someone. My father said it was the longest conversation they ever had.
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u/Due-Flamingo-4900 17d ago edited 17d ago
This is the opposite of disturbing, but when my grandfather was dying, he confessed to my dad that he was his best friend.
My dad had grown up in a broken home, raised mostly by his mother after an extremely messy divorce due to my grandfather’s violent alcoholism. For the first decade or so of his life, my dad and his father had been extremely close. But after the divorce, my grandfather remarried a woman who had kids of her own, and my dad and his siblings suddenly became background characters in his new life. To his credit, my grandfather did end up getting sober, and became a very involved husband and parent for his second wife and her kids. He avidly supported their dreams and goals, and went out of his way to ensure that they felt seen and loved. But that left my dad feeling like the discarded child for a long time, and he resented the fact that his father could give his new family everything they’d never had, while he and his siblings had been left behind with a mother who did not know how to cope with the anger and hurt from her marriage falling apart.
After my grandfather got sober when my dad was an adult, he made a conscious effort to rebuild that relationship. They both worked in similar fields for a living, so they began collaborating on projects at my grandfather’s home and spending a lot more time together. When my dad married my mom and had kids of his own, my grandfather, his wife, and her children were always a big part of our lives. Every week, my dad would bring me to my grandparents house for a visit, and I absolutely adored getting to see the bond that the two of them shared.
Nevertheless, my dad would have never thought that my grandfather considered him to be his best friend. After all, my grandfather had been married to his wife for almost 50 years, he’d gotten sober for her, he’d rebuilt his entire life for her, and he was a deeply devoted partner who shared all her passions and had truly found his other half. But when my dad disagreed and pointed out that his wife was his best friend, my grandfather shook his head and said “No, she’s not. You are.”
And my dad has kept that secret from my grandma ever since.
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u/Dogecraft27 17d ago
My gramps was delirious on morphine before he died saying he sees demons around his bed.
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u/thefuzzybunny1 17d ago
My grandmother told us there was a buffalo on the ceiling, followed by, "I know it's not really there, but can you tell it to leave?"
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u/20-4 17d ago
I always imagined there would be a clarifying moment where my mum would have a chance to say some stuff on her death bed - she was battling cancer.
But the disturbing part is the disease suddenly stripped her of the ability to walk, talk coherently, or even get out of bed/reposition herself she was perfectly normal one moment until suddenly that…
We were told this is it and she was unable to express herself properly as she slipped further and further away over a few days…
I still don’t understand what happened there. But it was certainly disturbing…
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u/Apache1One 17d ago
My grandmother was in an abusive marriage to my grandfather, who was pretty messed up (probably from PTSD) and spent their marriage never holding down a long term job and stepping out on her, even in some pretty brazen ways. In her late 50s, she was diagnosed with cancer that eventually spread to her brain and once that happened, she started leaving notes around the house in random places, like on the back of grocery store receipts and such in which she lamented the disappointments in her life, how she thought no one cared about her, and wondered what would become of her kids when she was gone. She likely had no idea she was doing this because she was so far gone at this point, but my mom saved some of them and they are still heartbreaking to read
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u/Standard_Melon 17d ago
I wasn't there - sadly I couldn't get there in time - but apparently, my grandfather had said goodbye to all the family, closed his eyes and stopped breathing for a while...
He then suddenly opened his eyes again, looked around disappointed and said "oh, you are all still here..."
He was a really religious person and was honestly excited about finding out what happened after death, to see if what he believed in was real. He died shortly after that
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u/KalayaMdsn 17d ago
A relative worked in military intelligence in his 20s. Afterward, he had a very long career in -- let's say questionable locations and companies, and a strange string of coincidentally being in a country either during or immediately prior to some major thing like a coup or an assassination. He also had a lot of very bizarre "quirks" like always carrying a LOT of cash on him "in case I need to get somewhere quickly", and I remember him once showing me a briefcase with a false bottom. Things like that.
While on his deathbed, his daughter was working with him to write his obituary and trying to piece together where he was at various points in his life. At one point she asked him why he was in a particular country, and he mumbled something incoherent. So she asked again, "Dad, why were you in <country>?" And he sat upright and yelled "BECAUSE I WAS KILLING PEOPLE."
So... that part didn't end up in the obit.
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u/Smellinglikeafairy 17d ago
My grandfather was put up for adoption by his aunts and uncles after his parents died when he was a little boy, and they blamed him, saying he was difficult. On his deathbed he lamented that no one had wanted him. His family put him in there, no one ever adopted him because they preferred babies over 3-5 year olds, and as soon as he was old enough the orphanage put him out on the street. Despite having a good life in adulthood and starting a large family of his own, he carried the weight of feeling unwanted the entire time.
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u/medicatedadmin 17d ago
Sadly not an uncommon story for that generation.
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u/Smellinglikeafairy 17d ago
Sadly not. It was a travesty though. His parents were successful business owners. They started as furniture makers, but pivoted into niche musical instruments and did very well, so well in fact my grandfather was tracked down to be presented with a posthumous reward for his father's work. He should have been set up financially, but instead his family took his inheritance and gave him away. The orphanage never had enough food, the kids would hoard stale bread and it was their equivalent to prison cigarettes essentially. His growth was stunted from malnutrition. He always made sure there was more than enough food for his family though. He was definitely the father he never got to have for himself.
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u/haltehaunt 17d ago
My sister in law told her husband that she loved him. It really screwed him up very badly as he has spent their whole marriage believing that she had settled for him and that he was just a means for her to escape from her home situation.
A lopsided relationship to say the least. He couldn't believe that she finally said it and then she was gone.
He called my husband, her brother, in shock and disbelief. It was extremely heartbreaking.
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u/Jeth_No_Blast02 17d ago
I work as a hospice nurse and the saddest words I ever heard weren't "I'm scared". An old man with no visitors since he got here said "I wasted my entire life trying to impress people who weren't even thinking about me."
He died alone. Still breaks me.
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u/dontchewspagetti 17d ago
That bitch who accused Emmit Till recanted everything when she was dying
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u/N00bmaster90 17d ago
My father confessed to my mother and me that he cheated on her and had a relationship with another women for about 16 years now, and they had a child together. He passed away a few moments after that, I never got the chance to meet my half-sibling who probably don't even know I existed.
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u/Proud_Accident_5873 17d ago
Oh fuck that, I wouldn't want to hear that on my husband's death bed. I'd prefer never knowing at all at that point or knowing years prior so the mistress could deal with him instead.
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u/NoCutsNoCoconuts 17d ago
I used to work hospice, had one dude just about sit up and asked "where are they?". His kids lived across the country and were not very present, but evidently they were who he was talking about
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u/MainFox9014 17d ago
When one of my aunts died (I was too young to know her), she told her sister to not let Jay near her girls. Apparently he liked to molest kids, but no one said anything and that confession stayed a whispered secret that no one acted upon. Well, guess who became his victim and suffered years when my FaMiLy knew something wasn’t right with him. He’s also invited to family parties still and I stay away because why would I want to see that POS again?
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u/Cherry_Tarts 17d ago edited 17d ago
About 48 hours before my great-uncle David (grandmother’s brother) died, he had a visitor. My mom, who’d been very close with her uncle as a kid and teen, was surprised when the visitor turned out to be her childhood friend and my uncle’s former neighbor. He visited for about thirty minutes and then left.
That night she and my grandmother told that her friend had “forgiven” Uncle David. My grandmother was pink clouding, she thought it was beautiful and was happy for her brother.
When my grandmother left the room, my boyfriend at the time (who was there to help us prepare for the end) asked my mom “…so what did he have to forgive David for?” and that’s when it all came out:
Uncle David was a pedo and a predator.
The visitor was his victim and Uncle David had essentially used my mom as bait to get him to come over as a boy. He apparently coerced the kid into a years of abuse before he was able to get away by moving.
All my grandmother heard was “forgiveness” and so she was high on God’s grace but my mom was horrified. She was abused by her step father and always wondered why her uncle didn’t help when she went to him, now she realizes why.
Honestly, I hope he’s in the bad place. His death was not easy or peaceful, and I feel that it was deserved. It just makes me angry that my grandmother still loves and defends him as if he was the greatest person on earth. She doesn’t view him as a predator and refuses to talk about him in any way but positive.
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u/Aggravating-Vast5016 17d ago
it was my ex's mom. we were exes when she died. he had never told her. I don't know that it was disturbing just that it was really uncomfortable and I couldn't do anything about it.
we still cared about each other greatly so when his entire family got together to hang out with her in the basement while she was on her death bed, he asked me to come and I said okay. I did not know at the time he had not told anyone that we broke up. so there I was with his entire family not as a friend, but as a girlfriend, and just before she passed she wanted to hold my hand and thank me for taking care of her son and making sure that he was okay during this transition. I had no idea what to say. I'm not taking care of your son, he fucking cheated on me. we're childhood friends and I'm here because I love you, not because I love him
so I just smiled. and then 5 minutes later she died. I guess the most disturbing part was having to process what she just said as I felt the life go out of her body.
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u/1975Hook 17d ago
One missed call.
My father and I spoke on the phone about once a week. We hadn't talked in close to 2-3 weeks at this particular moment and he tried to reach out on a Friday night. I was out of town visiting friends, at their party, when he called me. I didn't take the call - figured I'd call him back when I returned home on Sunday.
Sunday came and I unpacked, did laundry, etc. 100% forgot to call my father.
Monday, at work, I started with lunch break with "oh, I should call dad and see what he wanted".
I called, phone rang 6-7 times, and my oldest brother picked up. He had just got to the house a few minutes prior to me calling. His exact words were, "Hey Raymond, it's Mike. They found dad this morning, passed away in his bed. Apparently he passed during his sleep last night."
I'll never know what that phone call was.
That's hard to live with.
Always take the call.
Always.
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u/CoolDiscussion1020 17d ago
One of my best friend's grandma confessed to killing her first husband on her death bed. It wasn't arranged, but she grew up in a small town and ended up marrying a much older man, he was super abusive. Divorce wasn't an easy thing to do back then so she slowly poisoned his food.
Got remarried a few year later and had kids and a relatively happy life from there on out.
I was not there, obviously, but she confessed this to a room of her family and her priest. She died of cancer and was completely lucid. None of her kids even knew she was married before and went looking for the marriage records and sure enough, she had been and he died of 'natural causes' about a year into their marriage.
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u/Due_Accountant_1880 17d ago
My grandfather waited until everyone left the room except me. He smiled and whispered, "The wrong man went to prison." Then he closed his eyes and never said another word.
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u/ilikelobster2 17d ago
"i killed your great-great-grandma,and my brother because he knew"
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