Waiting for the call

[AllTheThingsWeCannotSee]

I am not in the UK and my Mum is. She's dying and it will be in the next day or so. She has advanced Alzheimer's and hasn't recognised me for years.
I won't be able to go under the quarantine thing.
I'm posting here really to ask about my dd. She knows her gran is ill obviously, she doesn't know she's at the end.
I don't know if I should tell her to prepare her or wait until it happens.
Nobody she knows has died really, and I find myself not wanting to take away these last few days (or hours) of that.
But should I?

How old is your DD? And is she close to your Mum?
Sorry you're going through this

Thank you for replying she's 16. They were very close when she was little but I stopped taking her to visit when we were over because it was dreadful for her to have this person who no longer recognised her asking her what she was doing there and would she go away etc.

I think I'm just going to wait. It won't be long. Tell her Granny passed away in her sleep which will basically be it as she has been on end of life pathway for a few weeks now.
Thank you again.

It’s horrible. My father died just before Christmas and it was obviously less stressful as we are in the same country and Covid wasn’t a factor. But I remember the lurch in my stomach when the phone rang or I got a text. As it turned out I was the one who was with him when he died and that made it easier for me. I hope you get through this as peacefully as is possible. Please don’t be offended if I say that along with sadness there is a sense of relief when it is over. I didn’t realise how much stress I was carrying until my blood pressure went down quite markedly after my father died.

💐

Yes, I understand that. It's been about 5 weeks since she really started going downhill and every ring of the phone and message has had me on edge.
Today when I was told this is really going to be it, it did almost feel better in some way.
Sorry for your loss Abraid2.

Any news @AllTheThingsWeCannotSee? Thinking of you.

Thank you so much.
She passed away last night.
I feel bizarrely calm and it's definitely almost a relief. Been a long week.
Thank you.

to you OP.

My dad died with dementia a couple of years back, it was a huge relief, and I was happy about it, as it meant the end of several miserable years. I read somewhere that dementia is a slow bereavement - we grieve while the person is still alive. The death felt more like a full stop than a loss.

*I should add, I'm not implying you're happy about this! Just that a bereavement after dementia doesn't always fit into how people expect a bereavement to feel.

Yes, absolutely. That's how I feel.
I cry obviously when people ring and are nice to me, but it's almost like I feel I can get on with stuff that I wasn't doing (an M&S order, daft things like that) because it felt flippant to be doing it while my Mum was slipping away.
Thank you for replying. And sorry about your dad. It's a dreadful thing

RIP to your mother and I hope the sense of peace stays with you. It has done with me, although I miss him. I felt my father had a long and mostly happy life and had died loved and safe.