I’ve told this story before, but it fits here so I’ll repeat it , I’ve got an aunt who is just like this. Her son was born with a serious heart condition and has had medical issues all his life. Stunted growth, heart and lung problems, kidney issues. He had a heart transplant as an infant but his mom did not take care of him properly. Spent the money my grandpa gave her for the kids meds on herself. My poor cousin was taken off the organ transplant list because he was “non-compliant.” I don’t know if something he can ever get back on but he’d have to get away from his mom first. 

But anyway, about 8 or 9 years ago he was in the hospital and doing really really bad. He weighed something like 70 lbs. as a 20 something man. He was basically skin and bones, wasting away. One night, things for really bad. At one point, while waiting to go into surgery, he told his parents that his grandpa had come and was asking him to go with him. Now, believe what you will, I don’t know if he saw the ghost of our dead grandfather or not, but what happened next kills me. My uncle told my mom what happened so take it with a grain of 4th hand salt. 

He looked at his mom and said something to the affect of, “it hurts so much. I want to go with grandpa. He says I won’t hurt anymore.” His mom, selfish bitch that she is, told him, “no, you have to stay. You can’t leave.” Now, with any normal persons that would sound like standard distraught begging. But she didn’t say it with sadness and grief. She ordered him. She said it with malice. She told him he would be lost without her. She said “how could you leave your own mother?”

So he stayed. He’s alive. Sort of. But he is a shell of a person. He is the living definition of dead man waking. In a way, it’s almost as if his soul did leave, but his body kept on ticking. I don’t know if I believe in all that (I’m pretty agnostic), but the end result is still the same. A sick man, barely holding on to life, who will never get better, basically waiting for permission to die. 

Makes me sick.