I lost my dear grandfather today. I guess I’ll find him in the sunsets

This might be long so if you read to the end thank you.

It all started with him taking a hard fall while trying to navigate his way in the dark (we don’t have stable electricity) he suffered a hip fracture but at the time we didn’t know and thought it was a dislocation. His eldest son (I hate our customs) took the decision to not take him to the hospital and instead had a local come fix it (the local man has no formal knowledge of bones only the ones passed down from his father who also had no formal education) 

After weeks of suffering and the man causing my beloved grandfather unnecessary pain plus lots of protest from my mum (because God forbid a woman has a voice) my grandfather is taken to an Air Force hospital. There he would stay for another month while they give us the run around. “He needs an X-ray , he needs a test, here’s some more pain killer, the orthopedic doctor traveled etc” until they tell us they can’t handle his case and for the first time we get to know that he had a hip fracture. Through all this he could speak and ate but had bathroom problems. 

He was finally referred to another military hospital but they rejected him (yes hospitals do that with no reason sometimes) so my uncle took him to another hospital that supposedly specializes in bones. They were good but we had a major problem. They were over maximum capacity and had people at different stages of death at the waiting room some unattended and some partly attended to. Finding a room there for my grandfather was another hassle but he eventually got a room next to two accident victims. One of the victims had both his legs completely crushed yet nothing was being done (I’ll never forget the smell of dying flesh as the accident victim laid there unattended for 24 hours) because they had much more urgent case and where understaffed or so they said.

Between how discarded the accident victim was and my mothers inability to stand up to her brothers I made a few calls and found a good private clinic that was able to take my grandfather in and give him adequate care, my mother finally stood up to her brother and got my grandfather transported. There he was schedule for surgery and the surgery was a success but that was only the start of this nightmare. The surgery sight would not stop bleeding (heavily) regardless of the doctors best efforts. A few weeks later he was stabilized and released, I thought it was smooth sailing from there but oh how wrong I was. The injury wouldn’t heal and it became infected. Worst part was while he was at home under the care of my uncle he was being starved and left in his own filth. At this point I was back to school and my mother tried her hardest to keep him fed but the only times my grandfather would eat was when she hand fed him which was once a day because she has my younger sibling to care for and a toxic husband. She begged her brother to feed and check in on him but my uncle reassured her with false promises. 

And if you’re wondering why we didn’t call the cops on my uncle, the police here only exist to bully people not to enforce the law (you could pay them as little as the equivalent of $11 to beat up and arrest an innocent person, all they need is a name and address) As his conditions worsened my mum took him to the hospital again. He was barely conscious and hardly communicated, his back covered in sores and his infection worsened. I was at college at this time and planned to come and visit. With the funds we had access to and the level of hospitals we have here all they did was pump him full of antibiotics and painkillers despite the fact that they knew he had an enlarged liver and severe bleeding from his rectum. 

He sadly passed away yesterday shortly after I traveled back here to see him. I didn’t get to see him alive. He was like a father to me and I share so many memories with him. 

I was able to see his body before he was buried (in our customs a person is buried immediately after death) and I got to say some sort of goodbye but grief is not something I’ve dealt with before in this intensity so it’s been rough. 

⛔️TW⛔️

To that end I never really truly knew the effects of death until yesterday, so please if you suffer from thoughts of suic1de and you think you’re freeing your loved ones from the burden of having you in their life. I promise, you’re not. I would rather change my grandfathers diapers for the rest of his life if it meant he’d experience life with me, you’re not a burden and if you ever need someone one to talk to you can always email me. I’m not the best at advice but you’ll always have a listening ear with me and I’ll always reply to your emails. 

With all the love in my heart.

Broken Hill. 

Also if you’re religious, no matter what religion please say a prayer for him. His initials are JMU

I also took his oldest possession, a broken clock. it’s of no monetary value but he thought me to tell the time on this clock so it means the world to me. Plus I’m the only sentimental one in the family.