Dude was 95 years old with advanced heart disease and Alzheimer's. There's a good chance he had no idea where he was or what was going on. It's a pretty large bad faith leap to think it's more likely that there is something nefarious going on. Occam's Razor in action.

My only question is if his wife died of Hantavirus why she didn't seek medical help for it. She had to have awful symptoms leading up to her death. I definitely could see Gene not recognizing what was going on at 95 with Alzheimer's.

I like the phrase 'smell test' because I get the literal visual of someone sniffing from a thousand miles away and saying, 'hmm, that's not right.

Death is a cruelty we will all endure at some point.

Dead bodies in a house for week or better, I imagine it wouldn’t smell right. ;)

And we’ll all face it alone.

Even if we’re surrounded by loved ones, we will face it alone.

Yeah, I wondered about that as well. Perhaps she was so focused on caring for him that she ignored her own problems until it was too late.

One thing is for sure - she wasn't a gold digger. Instead of chucking him in a nursing home she shouldered the burden of his care by herself, and died doing it.

I am the same situation with my Dad. I refuse to put him in a home tho. I watched my Mom die but better than a home. My granny was in 1 and no way!

I'm hoping to bring a cat.

It's a double-edged sword. OTOH, caring for somebody in that condition just gets worse and worse and worse, especially if you're still working, have other responsibilities, and have little in the way of support. But then, nursing homes are horrible. My maternal grandmother, who I was closer to that anybody else in my family, had dementia and died in a nursing home. I lived in another state, had a litany of my own personal issues, and was only able to visit occasionally. The last time I saw her she was so far gone that she didn't know who I was, who she was, or anything else, and just sat there playing with a doll and making baby sounds. It was awful. She was basically already dead, except her body didn't get the memo. Afterward, I sat in my car in the parking lot and cried like a little girl. Never could bring myself to see her again.

Good luck with what you're undertaking and may God grant you strength to see it through to the end. I'll never have to go through anything like that, as my parents are both long gone. As for me, I hope I go the way my dad did; massive heart attack, was dead before he hit the ground. Best way possible.

What a strange story.

Egyptian style? I like it.

What if the cat dies first? Are you going to have someone kill you?

That's really the end of it. People tell themselves different but all homes are terrible. All homes are full of underpaid employees who don't give a shit with terrible care.

I've worked in prisons and every single one has better care than these homes. I'm not joking. It's disgusting. My wife spent time visiting 3 or 4 different places in the area and even the high dollar home for the well off was shocking to see. I worked in a level 5 prison for a decade and the inhumanity and lack of care in these places made my soul want to vomit. Inmates don't deserve to end their lives like this.

The process of death, for most, robs you of your humanity. For most people it's a far off thing we don't have to think about but it's very real. You slowly lose all the tiny liberties we all take for granted. If you want to really experience gratitude go visit one of these places for 4 hours a month. Regularly. The people there deserve to have someone that does because no one does.

I am a disabled Vet so I am just lucky to have been able to retire. Kinda sucks tho. Too much time to think. Got to due what is right tho.

I always thought that having a bunch of people look (stare) at you while you die was kind of creepy. The times I knew a loved one was going to pass away I left and went to the waiting room. It doesn't prove that you loved them any more or less by staying there.

When my mother went into the hospital for the last time, she slipped into a coma after 4 days or so...the next 5 days someone from our family (dad or siblings) was by her side 24-7. The day she died, it was at a moment when, after my father left, my sister went down the hallway for some coffee. When she returned to the room, mom was gone. I truly think she waited for us all to leave so we didn't see her actually die.

I could bore you all with the story, but it was truly a grace filled 9 days, and I'm grateful we were all able to be there together. I don't think my mom thought it was creepy at all. But everyone has their own perspectives.

This thread is unintentionally depressing....

Same with my maternal grandmother. I visited her a couple of times, but that wasn't my grandma laying in that bed. I never went back again.

Can we get back to Gene FFS...smh

The last time I saw her was at some point in '93. She finally, mercifully passed in the summer of '95. I remember at some point in between talking to my uncle and he asked me if I'd seen her. I told him "no, and I feel kind of bad about it." His response was "You'd feel worse if you had. Don't go."

Sadly, he died of complications from Alzheimer's a few years ago. My last visit with him wasn't quite as bad as when I saw her for the last time, but he was clearly on the way out and it was obvious. I kept in touch with my aunt, who regularly updated me on his ever-worsening progress, but I never saw him again.

Yeah, this thread sucks. :(

IDK if you've ever lived with someone with late stage Alzheimer's but they're not there at all. Like less aware than an infant. My grandma had it and lived with us and at the end she was just a husk and completely unaware of anything around her, I was a total stranger to her. So yeah Hackman's wife dying and him just wandering around the house until he passed is entirely possible.

Really sad situation and a terrible way to go.

My uncle had bought some kind of insurance that paid for up to 3 years at a memory care facility. He wound up at a super nice one with a 1 to 2 patient to worker ratio. There was a bit of concern about what to do if he lived past the three years, so they waited as long as possible to put him in. But he had some kind of fast-acting dementia and only lasted a year and a half.

My other uncle hit his head a couple times and had temporary stays in a medicare-supported memory care place that was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We’d be there in the afternoon and there were still trays from lunch sitting around on counters. The staff were flat out mean to the patients even when we were around. I can’t imagine what it was like when no one was visiting.

I’m gonna Kevorkian it when I get that dementia diagnosis. I’ll do as many fun things as I can, but figure out when I need to do assisted suicide before I lose my faculties.

My grandpa went from pretty lucid with a bit of memory issues to not knowing what was going on day to day in the space of a year some change. It was pretty shocking how fast it was. By the end he didn't know what he had to eat the day previous.

You can set up small logic puzzles in front of a spear gun, and every day you have to solve the problem or face the consequences. That way you don't have to worry that you can't make the decision rationally.

Squid Game shit

The whole Gene Hackman thing stinks.

But as many posters here realize, old age stuff is a very mixed bag.

I went to my grandma’s funeral on my birthday. My grandpa died on 12/25. Timing wasn’t great.

Well gang…. My mom turned 83.

We went to her preferred restaurant…. Met her friends for 60 years, laughed, had dinner…. Christ, her friend’s husband had his THIRD bypass five weeks ago….

And then we went to the rehab center for my aunt, my mother’s sister…

This is the stuff I’m not good with…. Those two just talking…. And my cousin is there, but I have no connection…. But damn, they started going 40’s stories and I’m like, “wah?”

I guess I just wish we lived closer together so my mom could get together more often with her sis and close friends.

If I haven’t taken the long walk through the woods by then, I’d expect that’s the hope of most people.

Were brief, but sometimes we make friends, do something creative, have a family and sorta live on?

My other plan is to hike around cliffs a lot. Hopefully I just fall off when the time is right.

The noble death issue can take care of itself if you plan it right.

My sister just went to our older great cousin's 90th surprise party last week. I know surprising a 90 year old is stupid, not my idea.

Several wheelchairs, walkers, canes and crutches.

The photos my sister shared with me looked like the walking wounded.

Getting old ain't fun.

Best friend dealing with his 95 year old Mom and other best friend's Dad was in hospital for 9 days with pneumonia and now in rehab.

Not a fan of old age....:deevee:

At least the old whores move a little slower :thumb:

"Dying is easy. It's living thats hard"

I've known quite a few people who live good, active lives into their 80s.

But man it's downhill fast from there. The 90s look like absolute shit. Just a bunch of people feeling pain all the time and watching their friends die. Their minds are slipping and the real unfortunate ones know it so they're just mad about it all the time.

I think I'd probably be fine checking out around 88. Kids would be in their mid 50s. Grandkids to/through college. I'm good at that point. Great Grandkids don't pay shit for attention to their great grandparents for the most part. Not gonna be much more traveling worth doing.

Gives me another 45 years. Yeah - that seems good.

My mom suffered from Alzheimer's and dementia. Initially we hired a company to come to her home 4 days a week to cook meals and clean her home, but that fell through immediately when she wouldn't let them into her house. She had participated in all the interviews on a Friday but couldn't remember who they were when they showed up the following Monday.

We knew right then and there we had to move her into an assisted care facility. 14 years, two broken hips from falls later, she finally passed away at the age of 98.
Her life was reduced to sitting in her recliner or a wheelchair.
Conversations were impossible unless we showed her family pictures stored on my wife's Ipad. Even then you repeated the same conversation every 5 minutes, because she had already forgotten what had been said

The Hackman story is profoundly sad, but I completely understand how it can happen

When you are in your 40`s and 50`s death is still far away. When you get into your 50s and 60s, death is still far away. When you are in your 80`s and 90`s, you accept that death is coming......."just not today" LOL

The brain is all about self preservation because if you obsess with death, we would all go insane.

Ash Wednesday was last week. That is all about the reality of impending death.

My wife's grandmother was going strong well into her 90s. She lived alone, still drove, pretty much completely took care of herself. Hell, she still bowled regularly. Then she got in a car wreck and they took her license. After that, she became dependent on others and started to slip. Within a year they put her in assisted living and sold her house. Not long after that, nursing home. Eventually the family decided to move her from Syracuse to a home in our area in Chicago so my MIL could be closer to her. God, she was PISSED about that. After that, she pretty much quit talking to anybody and just looked mad all the time. All she wanted was to go home and be left the hell alone.

At 97, she suffered the stroke that would kill her a week later over 4th of July weekend of 2014 - part of my Great Death Weekend. In addition to her, I lost a cousin, an aunt and my paternal grandmother over the course of three days. That was ****ing surreal. Every time the phone rang somebody else was dead. All the deaths were unrelated - the cousin died of cancer and the others died of old age. Spent the next two weeks going to funerals from New York to Missouri.

One other thing about my wife's grandmother - she's the only person I've ever actually seen die. Everybody else was in the next room talking and I was watching her. She took a breath and then.... didn't take another one. That was ****ed up.

I don't really enjoy the 4th of July anymore.