Brenda Brenda:
Yeah, shit happens, right? [/sarcasm]
Until it is your own child... I can't imagine...
Well I've already accepted years ago that I and everyone else around me, regardless of attachments can and will go at anytime for whatever reason. I've already cheated death.... um.....
*counts* 6-8 times that I'm aware of.
I have had school mates die, friends die, family die, frig, everybody dies, it's a part of life.... and picturing having my own child die someday somehow.... well... that's just the reality of life that it may happen.
One can only do so much, but sometimes things are going to happen beyond your control.
One can always do the hindsight 20/20 thing and second guess what they could have done, what they could have avoided, what they could have said.... but beating yourself up over such things isn't going to change the fact that they're dead.
Case in point would have been my ex's mother who was struck and killed by an 80 year old driver in a pickup truck exactly one week before christmas less then one block away from her home... on her way home to safety.
Another case would be when my gandmother died and everybody in the family wanted her left on life support after her last stroke, which she never wanted and wanted to die naturally, which is why she never told anybody in the family she was having a stroke for a week. Due to their religious beliefs, they figured taking her off life support would be the same as assisted suicide (when in reality it would have been allowing nature to take it's course)
I knew what she wanted, I could see it in her eyes, while she couldn't speak with the breathing tube and crap shoved down her throat... nobody gave her anything to write with to express herself and every time she wanted attention, everybody would tell her just to lie and relax, goto sleep, etc.
I could have voiced myself and do what I felt was right, but I too was filled with guilt on what that'd do for my father and my grandfather, along with the rest of the family who didn't want to see her go.
Hindsight 20/20, I may have done things differently, but I didn't, and that's the reality of it..... life goes on, and sometimes life sucks, but one thing that is always constant is death and it doesn't have to be a bad thing all the time.
So long as people learn from their past actions and try to prevent or improve things for the future based on those experiences, that's all one can do and that death wasn't a waste.
But everybody has their own views on the subject.