A Little Over a Year Ago, My Stepfather Chose to Keep My Sister Alive | Reddit Stories

A little over a year ago, my stepfather chose to keep my sister alive. Today, he is sending her to a full-time care facility. Posted by you/Subushi.

My little sister was in a serious car accident in October 2020. She broke too many bones and it released fat into her bloodstream. The fat collected in her brain and deprived it of oxygen.

It's called cerebral fat embley. Yeah, I had never heard of it either. The scan they showed us looked like her brain was just full of big white spots.

She was 17 at the time. One doctor told us her brain is incompatible with life, among other things. But I remember that line specifically.

It was stark and cold, but it got the point across, and I believed him. My stepdad and mother took it to an emotional level and acted like they had been insulted when we reflected on the conversation. Another doctor gave his opinion.

This doctor walked into a room with my sister's beaten body, my stepfather, and my mother noticed my stepdad's Trump hat, and made a joke about him needing to win. I remember yelling, but I don't remember what I said. I was angry that anyone could even crack a smile at that moment.

Nonetheless, make jokes. Nonetheless, make effing political jokes. He told my stepdad, who had control over the decision to pull life support or not, we just have to pray.

If this was an older woman, then I would agree to pull the plug, but I have faith that she can get through this. I can feel it. I didn't believe him.

I don't believe in God, but I did get a glimmer of hope that hadn't been there before. My stepdad went full force belief that she would fully recover. She had to be resuscitated two more times that month.

My stepdad still chose to keep her on life support. Eventually, she started breathing over the ventilator. When she finally opened her eyes a few months later, I realized we had made an awful mistake.

She was not there at all. Her eyes always look through me. Her muscles stayed tensed and her arms tight to her chest.

Always. It looks so painful when I feel her arms. She always has a grimace.

She sometimes twists her face into a silent wide-eyed scream. Her face stays wet from tears. She was the most important person to me.

I loved her with all my heart. She and I had been through too much and helped each other navigate life. She was beautiful, intelligent, and amazingly creative.

The singular person I never expected or prepared myself to ever lose. And now here she was, all her vibrancy and life trapped inside this corpse. My stepdad stayed with her at the hospital till the day he brought her to his home.

He got his living room set up like a small hospital. He would bring her to a daycare once in a while and they say she has friends there. Anytime I think of her, it feels like my heart is going to vomit out of my throat.

The pain is so deep. This would be so much easier to handle if I thought she had moved on. But my soul is crushed at the thought of her having an inkling of consciousness in that body.

And even more, I can do absolutely nothing about it. Today, I found out he is sending her to a full-time facility because she has made no progression and they are starting to think she will not actually recover. My mother seems relatively unfazed, but I find it impossible to not see the depth of this moment.

the choice he made to keep her alive. And now she will spend the next 50 or so years trapped inside a shell, staring at the white walls of a building full of strangers, seeing the occasional familiar tearary face, unable to express the violent boredom she feels, if she can even understand what being bored is. Maybe she is just screaming in her mind, endlessly tortured by her confusion.

An everlasting hell. This is such an effing nightmare. Top/relevant comments.

Commenter, I am truly sorry that this happened to you and her. My grandfather had Alzheimer's and the condition he ended up in made me understand the value of quality of life. I didn't cry when he passed away.

I cried while he was still alive because he was unable to move or communicate. Eventually, he got to the point where he couldn't even swallow. So, when he passed away, I felt like he was free from a body that he was trapped in.

I understand how you feel. Commenter two, we would not even do that to animals we love. Ops response.

I can't tell you how many times I have screamed exactly this. Downvoted commenter three. As strongly as I agree with you, I feel there was no correct decision in that moment.

Choosing to end a loved one's life so soon after a trauma is not a decision that should fall on any one person, especially a non-blood parent. Time would create animosity regardless of his choice. That choice was not his to make.

You did not go into the reason why her mother, who was present and accounted for, had no strong feelings one way or the other. circumstances notwithstanding, the decision should have been made by you and her mother. I am very sorry for the loss of your sister.

I do not believe we should use technology to sustain the heartbeat of anyone whose brain is not functioning at a level where they can experience happiness. I understand and respect that you don't believe in a creator, but I do. You and your sister are in my prayers.

Ops response. The correct decision was to let her go. It's his daughter, my stepdad.

My mother is a raging drug addict, wheelchair bound by her addiction. She stays isolated and never really showed strong emotions about the situation, which is on par with her character. I knew from day one it was wrong to keep her alive.

I understand he loved her, but ignoring logic because of your love is cruel and selfish. I don't care what everyone thinks. This man also was nearly never around when she was little because he was also a drug addict.

Before she passed, they had almost no relationship. She did not like him. I was the only one that truly loved her in that room.

Downvoted commenter four. As much as I agree that your dad made the wrong choice, no one is born perfect and no one knows what to do all the time. We make wrong decisions due to which we and our loved ones suffer.

I would say don't be so hard on your parents. At a time like this, what you need is to be supportive and be there for each other. I'm sure that even your parents realize how much they effed up even though they might not want to admit it.

We do selfish things for the people we love. We as humans are hopeful beings and we hold out hope. If I or my family member was ever diagnosed with something terminal, we would never give up until the last breath.

What you need is understanding and empathy at the moment. I'm sure they already feel shifty as it is. No need to make things worse.

This is my opinion though. To add to this, were your sister in her senses to make decisions herself, if your parents went against that, that would be immoral. Absolutely.

But this was not the case. And in such situations, we do what we consider the best. Maybe they couldn't handle the idea of losing her and they got hung on that little hope they had of getting her back.

I just know that I wouldn't give up on my loved ones either. My baby sister had a stroke at 27 and I kind of understand a bit what you went through. Forgive your parents.

They need you now more than ever and you need them. Ops response. There is a lot that happened in our lives and compounded with losing my sister.

We have no relationship anymore. We are cordial with each other though. Update: 2 years.

One month later, I see her face in young people, and it hurts. I need to vent this. Whenever I meet young adults that were her age when the accident happened, I feel protective and sad.

I feel like I'm seeing my sister again, and I hate it. For context, about 3 years ago, my sister was in a serious car accident at 17. She finally passed away 8 months ago after 2 years of suffering, stuck in a broken shell.

I can be out sometimes, and my friend's sister will come hang out. I love her, but I get weird and sad almost every time. I feel like I need to give her advice, like I need to make up somehow by passing off what I have learned that I couldn't show to my sister.

I do my best to stop myself because I know it must be annoying and because I annoy myself with it. We also have a family that we're close with and their little girl reminds me so much of Leanne. She's smart, witty, creative, ambitious, everything my sister was.

She tells me about how good she is doing in school and I get heartbroken. Then I get angry at myself for being so selfish. The nights after I see people like this, I always end up sobbing when I'm alone.

I feel like I need to vomit my heart up. I think about all the life Leanne missed out on. Relationships, breakups, friendships, discussions, realizations, the grief, the loneliness, the rage, the love, the boredom.

So much boredom. She'll never experience any of this crap that makes life so beautiful and so terrible that we all take for granted. And I missed out getting to watch her live it.

I see her absence everywhere. Second update. One year 10 months later, I posted to true off my chest three years ago during one of the worst periods of my life.

I wrote the post below for the subreddit/grief support as a thank you and a goodbye to that sub, but felt it was a good idea to bring it here as well. Maybe my story can reach others who need to hear this. TWW grief and unaction self harm.

In 2020, my beautiful 17-year-old sister was in a car accident which resulted in her becoming a non-verbal paraplegic for nearly 2 years. She eventually passed and was released from that horrible condition. I helped raise her alongside our two drug-addicted, violent parents.

She was my sister, my best friend, and practically my child. I felt like my heart was ripped from my chest. I tried to do my normal dayto-day, but when I was finally alone, I would sobb for hours, sometimes until I threw up.

I felt as though my body was filled with lead. Around the time of the original post, but before she finally passed away, I completely checked out. I decided I did not want to experience the pain anymore and made a plan to end my life.

I would write a letter to every person important to me and make my exit. This comment is where I alluded to this in the original post. It feels important to the story.

Editors note op linked his comment in a comment chain. Start of comment chain. Commenter, your stepdad is a selfish prick.

Commenter too, that doctor who gave them hope she might recover is the jerk. The stepdad in his grief jumped at the chance that she could recover. Ops response.

I spent a lot of the night looking for the doctor's name so I could write him a letter. I hoped to inform him that this is just as much as doing as my stepfather's in the near future. End of comment chain.

I took time off and started writing the letters. After a few days, I went to sleep knowing I had two more left. One for my father and one for my best friend.

I was prepared for the next day to be my last. I woke up the next morning to a call from my friend. She invited me to a bar for some drinks with our group and I reluctantly said yes.

It was a beautiful sunny day. We sat on the patio, had some beers, laughed, walked around the bayou, enjoyed the breeze. I felt alive again for the first time in a long time.

I remember the last moment of that day still so vividly. I was sitting by the water thinking I only had two letters left and it came to me. I would have missed this.

That thought changed my life. I've since made a solemn vow that I am going to stick it out until the end for better or worse. After that day, I joined the grief support sub along with other support groups and got a therapist to help navigate the tremendous pain I was experiencing.

Later, I started commenting on posts in the support subs to give insights on my experiences. I hope I have helped some people by sharing my thoughts and what I have learned. Now, I am at a phase where I feel like I am plateaued in my recovery and seeing some of these posts in the support subs are forcing me to relive darker days that I don't want to anymore, making me realize something.

I no longer need grief support. This realization feels like a major milestone for me that I finally see myself as stable enough to no longer need the encouragement and advice these communities offer and not only to me but the stories support and love you have given each other has also been a boon in my journey with the new year. I wanted to write this post for myself as a marker to say goodbye to this sub grief support to thank all of you for your stories and your compassion and to leave some parting thoughts of hope for any of you that feel a connection to where I was a few years ago.

Things will get better. I know it is cliche, but if there is anyone you can trust those words from, I would think it is me. Something I've learned and try to share often.

This grief you feel will never go away. It will never get smaller. But you will grow bigger around it.

And you will become more because of it. Know there is hope. Right now very well may be the worst part in your life.

And we know that nothing can ever be the same without them. But if you take things one day, sometimes one step or even one breath at a time, you will experience good days again. You will feel love again.

You will be happy again. Life is a painting. Any beautiful painting needs dark colors as well as bright colors.

But it has to be completed. These dark days will make your future bright days all the richer and more vibrant. But you have to fight through this to see them.

I'll be happy if even one person reads this and takes away the most important lesson I nearly didn't get a chance to learn. Don't miss the rest of it. Top/relevant comments.

Commenter. Yeah, it was weird when I realized I graduated from the widow chat communities. Not because I was done grieving, but because I realized the pain had moved.

I didn't want to continue to dwell or it would be all-consuming. Up, I'm so happy you found happier times. Commenter two, thank you for posting this.

I read that things will get better and I broke down. I needed this. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I appreciate you. OP to another commenter. Thank you so much.

Someone commented in the original post something I still think about a lot. Life is suffering. To survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

I have tried to help others navigate their own grief with the thought that her death can have some meaning. I've always enjoyed writing and hope my words have saved people. I feel some guilt about leaving the support groups knowing I will have fewer opportunities to share and help coach others.

But my therapist agrees that it is what's best so I can continue to move on. So I'm sharing here too for a final opportunity to get our story out to those who may need it. It feels tremendous that Leanne and myself touched you.

You are loved and tomorrow is a new day.