In 2001 a Dear friend of My Family, essentially my Uncle was thrown from his motorcycle while drunk.
I'm not here to debate motorcycles, nor drinking, I am here to tell my story; please stay on topic.
He was in a coma, and woke up after September 11, and when we told him what had happened, he tried to get up saying that he needed to go help his Brothers.
He was a Firemen, and a **** good one.
He would have made a great Dad, too, we all knew he had it in him- hell, we even joked that he was my Brothers Dad!
But sadly, he never got to be a Dad, not officially..
He had quite a bit of brain damage, they said he would never wake up but he did, and I think that was because we all went to see him quite a bit, but also because the women he was going to see when he crashed really really Loved him, and when she wasn't working she was sitting at his bed keeping him company through the whole coma.
When we smuggled my puppy into his hospital room, the one he had given us a few years prior, he thought it was HIS dog, my dog's Father.
I was only 11 but it even hurt me to hear that, thought I didn't understand that it did.
He got better when they said he wouldn't.
They sent him to physical rehab and he started to walk with help, but his right hand wouldn't open by itself, so they would give him putty to hold to try to stimulate the hand, and his muscles were all jelly like, and even the way he talked.. hurt so bad to hear..
It hurt bad to be around him, but he lived up the street at his Mom's house while his Girlfriend was at work - yes, the same Girlfriend he was dating prior to all this happening, the one he had went to go see, who stayed at his side, and now had let him live with her.
I tried to avoid going up to see him at every chance I could; I was tired, I didn't like the smell of the Spanish food, I didn't like his parents - - ANYTHING!!
His Girlfriend married him, because his Sister and Mom were slowly siffening money out of his bank account to "pay for his things" while he was there with his Parents.
They did things like normal, even sex, and he had his sense of humor back, he made fun of the first picture I had drawn of a girl with boobs (it WAS horrible, by the way, little parenthesis that looked like they had fallen at her chest.)
We were so proud of him.
One day though, we found out he was hitting her, which was very uncharacteristic of him; his wife was depressed because he was becoming different, we stopped seeing him nearly as often, him and I stopped playing thumb wars, it was our only way of bonding after his accident (he always beat me, and beat me bad because he didn't realize his own strength in his left hand anymore!)
My Mom had sent me out to Arizona for my Sister's birthday.
It was so memorable, so traumatizing I actually wrote about it later for a paper in school:
My Sister woke me up, I was half falling off her couch, her friends who flew in to be there with her for her Birthday were sitting in the living room talking quietly and she told me Mom was on the phone and wanted to talk to us together.
She left and went to her room and I followed, stumbling down the hall a little and sat on her bed next to her.
She held up the phone on speaker between our ears, and. as we sat close together, my Mom took a deep breath.
"Girls..."
We waited.
"Girls, Uncle Caesar died."
The ground dropped out from below me, the walls flew backwards away and there was darkness, my Sisters bed, us and the phone, just floating in space all alone.
A scream snapped me back, made the room slowly appear into sight again.
I blinked, I was chocking on my tears, so I knew it wasn't me screaming.
I looked over and it was my Sister, just finishing her release of grief as I hugged her.
The phone was still on the call and my Mom told us she'd give us some time and my Sister told her goodbye - barely through all the sniffling and crying - and we held each other.
I looked over her shoulder and saw her two friends staring back at me.
I closed my eyes and started to cry.
My point is the classic: Please PLEASE spend time with the person, even if you are scared for WHATEVER reason you might be.. Please PLEASE try to deal with your grief, it took me 8 years to properly grieve, and that was only after I was hospitalized for the second (but not) last time for mental problems, which I still feel this was a big reason for.
Let the person know you Love them, even if they can't properly understand you, because even if they can't, it doesn't mean it might not make them happy for one second anyway, and it will bring YOU a great amount of comfort knowing you tried.
They LOVED you before this happened, that doesn't change.
When I miss my Uncle a lot, I close my right hand into a fist, or I ask someone I Love to play thumb wars with me, and I think of him and smile and I might cry then, I might cry many many times after thinking of him, but I try to think of what he would probably say, or I ask my Mom - someone who knew him well - what he might say.. " Aww quit your whining you baby. Are you a girl or a man?"
...by the way I'm a women XD
I'm here if anyone needs support.