I'm so, so sorry OP.
I'd like to apologise in advance if this is utterly over the top because you don't struggle with this in the way I have, or if it's simply unwelcome.
I get really choked up about these things, partly I think due to what is probably PTSD, but I'm slowly learning that no matter the death, those left behind feel dreadful, feel guilt, etc., and we add emotions and experiences to others' moments of dying because we fear the worst for them and love them so much.
But in all likelihood it is none of the awful things we imagine. Just think how many times you've had a shocked moment and things have gone by in a flash before you even realised what happened.
You would have been devastated to lose her whenever and however it had happened, and, of course, it would have happened. I can only imagine that in reality, in the moments of death there is nothing but a focus on the sense of slipping away, if there's even time for such thoughts. For the person or creature dying, death isn't the torture that we, the loved ones left behind, use to torment ourselves. Somehow, we seem to have a tendency to mix our gut-wrenching grief and the awful hole the dead leave us with in with the story we put together in our heads of how their last moments were for them. When I manage to look at it rationally, I realise that their actual experience of their last moments was likely far narrower, briefer, and without that sour note of grief we add. It is just death. It will happen to us all. And I honestly don't think the experiences of it vary all that much depending on the hows and the whens and the whys. It's far simpler and more natural than what we turn it into.
