There’s a particular kind of dread that coils in your chest when you park the car, take the elevator up, and walk down the hospital hallway, knowing that each day might be the last you see your loved one alive.
It is not the dread of panic or drama.
It is the dread of knowing.
It’s the dread of understanding, in your bones, that the person who shaped you, comforted you, and helped define you is slipping further away by the hour.
And there is nothing I can do but show up and be present.
That is what I do now for my 92-year-old grandmother, Maureen.
She is receiving comfort care at Meritus in Hagerstown, Maryland, where she was born, raised, raised a family, and shared the love only a grandmother could for her grandson.
It was acute renal failure that hospitalized my grandmother on Sunday, July 6. She’s been in a hospital room on Meritus’ fourth floor ever since.
Her once-brilliant mind, long taken by the slow, cruel erasure of Alzheimer’s, now rests in silence.
I sit by her hospital bed, where she breathes softly while connected to oxygen.
Her gaze is a fixed stare into the left corner of her hospital room.
I wonder what she sees?
I wonder if she knows what’s happening.
I have so many questions – and maybe I’m scared to find out the answers. Because those answers only further reinforce that much too soon, our goodbye will become final.
There we sit — my mother and I — two only children bound not just by blood but by the unbearable honor of loving the same woman more than anyone else on earth.
The room is quiet, sterile, still — and yet it feels impossibly full, heavy with memory.
It’s just us now, her daughter and her grandson, bearing witness together as the center of our world gently slips beyond reach.
There is no guidebook for this.
No script.
Just breath, silence, and the ache of knowing that the person who made us feel safest is now the one we cannot save.
Since July 6, I’ve walked the hospital hallways with existential dread.
And we sit with her.
Because when death draws close, the unnecessary things in life fall away.
Small talk evaporates.
The masks we wear in daily life — of strength, detachment, competence — melt in the quiet hum of a hospital room.
And what remains?
Hands are held.
Tears are shed.
Silence is honored.
Grief in these moments is not conceptual.
It is visceral. It lives in your gut; it floods your chest.
It crawls into your throat when you remember something small – the sound of my grandmother’s laughter, heard throughout her home, as she sat in her television room in the mornings, watching Regis & Kelly.
It’s the way my grandmother would quietly replenish my bank account when I was too broke and too proud to ask; it’s the protective fierceness she showed when the world could be unkind to us.
My grandmother, Maureen, my Memaw – she was always there. She was just always there for me – no matter what.
She and my late grandfather, my Pap, who passed on December 22, 2020, have been my constant; they were my anchor, my rock, my steady, for 39 years of my life.
All was safe and sound when I was with them.
And now, I remember it all at once.
And it hurts so, so much. It hurts more than I can put into words.
I ache.
But the most gut-wrenching moments — the most human ones — are when I lean in close, take my grandmother’s hand, and begin to whisper in her right ear.
I speak gently, not knowing whether she can hear me. My voice sometimes breaks. I know she would want me to be strong.
I say the things I have said a hundred times over; I say the things I never quite had the words for.
I thank her profoundly.
I tell her how much I love her unconditionally. I tell her that I wouldn’t be a fraction of who I am today without her and my grandfather.
And I reassure her that it’s okay to let go; I know she’s tired. She’s fought so long and so hard.
I remind her of the life she lived, the memories she gave us, and the woman she was before the silence.
But here’s the painful truth: while I whisper to comfort her, I am quietly, desperately pleading for something in return.
A flutter of the eyelid.
A twitch of the lip.
A squeeze of the hand.
Anything that tells me my voice still reaches her.
Because even as I try to soothe her fear, it is I who is afraid.
Afraid she might be scared, too.
I’m invariably afraid that I haven’t done enough.
This is the agony of watching someone die: You give them your strength, but inside, you are breaking. And yet you keep whispering.
Because whispering becomes a kind of ritual — a sacred act of love that asks for nothing, but hopes for everything.
Even if she never responds, I will continue to talk to her.
Because it is all I have left.
Because love demands that we speak, even when silence answers back.
These final days strip life down to its bones.
No emails.
No errands.
No pretense.
Just the irreducible truth that we love people, and then we lose them.
But in losing them, we remember.
And in remembering, we resist the idea that death erases all.
I believe in presence.
And right now, mine is all I can give.
So I give it: Fully. Quietly. Brokenly.
Because when my beautiful grandmother, Maureen, takes her final breath, I want her to know — or at least I want myself to know: Memaw, you didn’t go alone.
You were never alone. And you never let me be alone.
You mattered.
To me.
Forever.
If You’re Reading This
If you’re walking that same hospital hallway or sitting beside your loved one in silence, know that you are not alone.
These moments are the most genuine human experiences any of us will ever have.
You may feel helpless.
But your presence is the comfort.
Your whisper is the meaning.
And your grief – brutal as it is – is proof of love that was real and deep and worth it all.
If you’d like to share a memory of someone you’ve lost or are losing, I invite you to write their name on a piece of paper and carry it with you.
Say what you need to say.
Hold their hand.
And let them know that their love is carried with you forever.
Ryan Miner, MBA | Co-Founder and Podcast Host | The Senior Soup
Hi, I'm Ryan!
I co-founded The Senior Soup Soup with Raquel Micit in September 2022. Together, we host The Senior Soup Podcast.
I am a community relations manager for Ennoble Care in Maryland, where I am responsible for marketing our home-based primary care healthcare practice.
I have over 15 years experience in healthcare, senior services, senior care, marketing, public policy, and search engine optimization.
I have a MBA from Mount St. Mary's University and a BA from Duquesne University.