the day my grandfather got sick essay

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How My Grandfather's Disease Has Changed My Life

Categories: Grandfather Personal Experience

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Published: Mar 18, 2021

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My Grandfather Essay

Essay on my grandfather:-.

Grandfather - Grandchildren's relationships are incredibly special. Grandfathers are favourites among the grandchildren. Here are some sample essays on my grandfather.

100 Words Essay On My Grandfather

My grandfather has an intriguing nature. He has always been a great role model for me. His name is Vijay Kumar and he is 75 years old. Throughout the day, he is energetic and engaged in his work. Everyone in our family respects him. He has an unwavering affection for us and always treats everyone with kindness and compassion. He is a former army officer and because of this he has always given education and discipline a high priority. Every morning as he gets out of bed, he gets ready for his morning walk. He is one of my dearest friends and I admire him. I wish for his happiness and health every day.

200 Words Essay On My Grandfather

My grandfather is an extremely lovely and kind man. He is respected by all in our family. He enjoys reading books. The personality of my grandfather is fascinating. He has always served as a significant example for me. He has a strong sense of self. My grandfather always goes for morning walks. Every morning when he gets out of bed, he walks across our neighbourhood park quickly, comes back and sits down on the grass to read one of his favourite novels.

For many years, my grandfather was employed at a bank. He has a very simple and tranquil life. He regularly reads books and magazines. In the evenings, he examines our schoolwork and assists us if we have any issues. He often travels to see his buddies. He maintains tight relationships with the people around him, and they enjoy his company a lot. They respect him highly and seek his help and guidance.

My grandfather has lived a moral life. Throughout his tenure in service, he would undoubtedly encounter several challenges and pressures. The challenges he faced in life undoubtedly made him as tough as steel and gave him courage and self-assurance. He always encourages us to work hard and show kindness. I want to lead a moral and honest life, just like him.

500 Words Essay On My Grandfather

My grandfather is a wonderful person. He looks after me like a second father. Since my birth, he has been at my side. When my father was ill or tired, my grandfather looked after me. When my father wasn't able to watch over me, my grandfather sat next to me. My grandfather always takes me for a walk when I return home in the evening. I have a great love for my grandfather.

My grandfather is the one I aspire to be and who inspires me the most. He is the most accomplished person in every element of life while also being the most modest, and humble. My grandfather is one person who has been my mentor since I was a young child, and has perfectly directed me each day and at each stage of my life by using examples from his own experiences. The self-made man tells his narrative of determination.

I have gained a lot from him in my life, and I go to him for advice at every turn. And he continues to offer the finest insights into current events and the workplace. He is the one who showed me how to approach life with optimism and to express gratitude for whatever we have.

My Grandfather Is My Best Friend

My first and closest friend is my grandfather. The first person to play with me was him. My grandfather has made a lot of sacrifices for me. He encourages me to learn new things even when I am scared. My grandfather is someone I adore. I made a commitment that I would look after my grandfather when I grow up.

I Love My Grandfather

All of our relationships remain very special to us. A parent supports their child in all ways. But a grandfather devotes all of his time to his grandchildren. A grandfather-grandchild bond is unique. He looks after you, he guides you, and he pampers you.

I Love my grandfather. He is the most amazing person I have ever met. I adore spending time with him. I simply forget everything when he is around. Every time he visits me, he gives me a present. He is an extremely generous man. He always makes me feel how blessed I am to have a grandfather like him.

Morals Of My Grandfather

The simple lifestyle that my grandfather instilled in me has always been an encouragement to me. He makes me laugh all the time. He offers me whatever I ask for, including toys and sweets and never thinks twice before helping me. He constantly makes an effort to make me happy.

My grandfather is a really kind and compassionate man and I adore my grandfather so much. He taught me to treat people well, be kind and always have gratitude. He tells me about every adventure he has had, and what he has accomplished and cherished throughout his time. He teaches me to respect everyone, regardless of their age. Before we can receive respect from others, we must first show respect to others.

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COVID-19 Killed My Grandfather. But My Dad Was Too Busy Treating COVID-19 Patients to Grieve Him

I n early February, I got the call I’d dreaded for months: my 82-year-old grandfather, Charlie Law, had died. I’d tried to prepare myself as best as I could; Grandpa had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and he had been in physical and mental decline for about four years. Still, I hadn’t seen my grandparents in person for two of those years because of the pandemic.

Once the initial waves of shock and sadness had washed over me, I was surprised to find I was angry. Losing my grandfather was inevitable, but it felt as if the disease that finally took his life—COVID-19—was not. Although my grandfather was vaccinated and boosted, his dementia had confined him to a nursing home, which meant that he was at the mercy of the assisted living facility and the surrounding community to protect him from the virus. While I’d accepted that my grandpa didn’t have long to live, and I knew that he was suffering, I’d hoped (naively, maybe) that he’d slip away in his sleep. COVID-19 had robbed him of even that.

Shortly after Grandpa passed, I asked my dad, Dr. Kevin Law—a doctor specializing in pulmonology and critical care at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton in New Jersey—about how he is coping with losing his father to COVID-19. He has helped lead his hospital’s response to the pandemic through surge after surge for the last two years and has treated about 1,200 patients with COVID-19 at the hospital.

Grandpa getting COVID and suffering was the thing I was hoping wouldn’t happen.

KEVIN LAW : I had an educated guess that he was going to get a life-threatening infection this winter: either a urinary tract infection, pneumonia, or COVID. I wasn’t there, but I really don’t think he suffered. Maybe that’s my mind playing tricks on me, but I’ve seen patients like this. When they’re very infirm, they become unconscious and go quickly.

I know my mom had some anger about it and felt like he hadn’t been protected at the nursing home. But I’d like to think that the institution did its due diligence to protect the patient. Unfortunately, this latest iteration of COVID is very infectious. If you’re susceptible, I don’t think there’s any escaping it, whether you’re out in public or in an institution.

Has being on the front lines of the pandemic made it harder for you to cope with Grandpa’s decline?

KL : I don’t think I was as present for my parents as I would have been ordinarily, and that that was frustrating. I’m very busy, they’re in another part of the country, and at times it’s been risky to travel.

I was surprised that you worked on the day that Grandpa passed. lt must have been hard for you.

KL : For your own mental health, you have to learn how to separate work, play, and personal life. I compartmentalize. You have to be able to do your job. You learn over time—as hard as it is, sometimes—to not let it interfere with your professional functioning. If I did, it would be very difficult to function.

A lot of people said I should have taken the day off, I should have taken a week off. I certainly contemplated that, but it would have just been way too much for the people I work with. They would have been overwhelmed.

I have pretty complicated feelings about the circumstances of Grandpa’s death, because like you, I expected he would pass anyway. But it just feels bad that people didn’t try harder to stop the virus from spreading.

KL : Over time, I learned not to waste a lot of energy on people’s behavior that I can’t change. I try to work on it with individuals, and I do get frustrated at times, dealing with individuals that don’t have a good explanation for why they’re not getting vaccinated. The fact that some people are going to be resistant to it is just human nature, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.

I do see people who, even though they’re not doing well, are still happy with their decision that they weren’t vaccinated, which is a remarkable thing to me. Or they’re willing to accept their fate, such as it is.

How have patients been treating you recently at this point in the pandemic?

KL : I see a lot of impatience. I see a general lack of understanding. I don’t think they have as much empathy for us when we’re fatigued or working hard or late or running behind. I think people were very sympathetic at first, and I don’t think they are anymore.

They have to understand that a lot of us are still in that same position. We’re still working much harder than we normally would. Even though most of us are vaccinated, we’re still putting our livelihoods and our health at risk. We’re really still working for the public and individuals. If they have some anger or frustration over this whole thing, it shouldn’t be targeting medical workers.

How do you deal with your own anger at people for not getting vaccinated? How do you take care of yourself?

KL : There are times when I have empathy fatigue: when I don’t feel as empathetic as I would normally feel for a sick, infected patient if they’re not vaccinated. I have plenty of empathy for people who did get vaccinated but got sick in spite of it.

Anger is a strong word. It’s more frustration and the feeling of impotence over the situation at times. The time I most feel it is when we’re very busy in the hospital. I’ve seen 30 hospitalized COVID patients in a single day, sometimes 35. It wears you down. Maybe my experience helps me to handle the pain of my dad’s death a little better. And it helps minimize my anger and frustration.

I think that some of the anger that people have about the virus, and the restrictions that have been placed on them, are somehow transferred onto physicians, nursing staff, and hospital workers. When I feel like somebody is targeting me or displacing their anger, this is something that I can call upon to kind of defuse that situation. I say, “Listen, I lost my dad to this as well. So on some level, I understand what you’re feeling.”

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Essay on My Grandfather

Students are often asked to write an essay on My Grandfather in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on My Grandfather

My grandfather’s kindness.

My grandfather is the kindest person I know. He always has a warm smile for everyone. When I visit him, he greets me with a big hug and asks about my day. He loves to share stories and treats from his garden.

His Love for Gardening

He spends hours in his garden, growing vegetables and flowers. His hands are rough from work, but he handles plants gently. He teaches me names of flowers and how to plant seeds. His garden is a place of magic for me.

Tales of the Past

Grandfather tells tales of his youth, making history come alive. His stories are full of adventure and lessons. He makes me feel connected to the past and teaches me the value of experience.

Grandfather’s Wisdom

He gives great advice. When I’m upset, he listens and helps me see things clearly. His words are simple yet deep, and he always knows how to make things better. He is my role model.

Also check:

Speech on My Grandfather

250 Words Essay on My Grandfather

My loving grandfather.

My grandfather is a kind and gentle man. He has white hair and always wears a warm smile. When I think of him, I picture his cozy living room and the stories he tells. He loves to share tales from his youth, and his eyes light up when he talks about the past.

Teaching Me Life Lessons

One of the best things about my grandfather is the wisdom he shares. He teaches me right from wrong and shows me how to be patient and fair. His life stories are like lessons that help me understand the world. He believes in hard work and always tells me to do my best in school.

His Hobbies and Interests

My grandfather has many hobbies. He enjoys gardening and has a beautiful garden full of flowers and vegetables. He also likes to read books and newspapers every day. Sometimes, he reads stories to me, and I learn new things from them.

Spending Time Together

I love spending time with my grandfather. We often go for walks or play board games. He listens to me when I talk about school or my friends. He gives me advice and makes me feel important. My grandfather’s house is a place where I feel happy and safe.

In conclusion, my grandfather is a special person in my life. His kindness, wisdom, and love make my world a better place. I am thankful for every moment I spend with him, and I hope to make him proud as I grow up.

500 Words Essay on My Grandfather

Who my grandfather is.

My grandfather is an important person in my life. He is my father’s father and has white hair and warm, gentle eyes. He’s not very tall, but he stands straight, and when he smiles, his whole face lights up. He’s old, but he’s not slow. He walks every morning and even plays with us sometimes.

His Daily Life

Every day, my grandfather wakes up early. He likes to start his day with a cup of tea and the newspaper. He reads about what’s happening in the world and then goes for a walk. He says that walking keeps him healthy. After his walk, he spends time in the garden. He loves plants and knows how to make flowers grow big and bright.

My grandfather knows a lot. He tells me stories of when he was young. He has lived through times when there were no computers or smartphones. He has seen the world change. When I need advice, I go to him. He listens carefully and then gives me ideas that are simple but smart. He teaches me right from wrong and helps me understand difficult things in a simple way.

His Hobbies

He has many hobbies. He likes to paint, and his pictures are beautiful. He also likes to make things out of wood. He made me a small chair when I was little. He enjoys music and sometimes sings old songs. These songs tell stories of the past. I love to sit and listen to him because it feels like I’m traveling back in time.

Time With Family

Family is very important to my grandfather. He makes sure that we all eat at least one meal together. During dinner, he asks about our day and shares his own stories. On weekends, he takes us to the park or the museum. He says that spending time with family is the best thing in life.

His Love for Food

My grandfather loves to eat and he has a big sweet tooth. He enjoys cakes and cookies, but he also loves healthy food. He often eats fruits and vegetables from our garden. He says that good food can make you happy and healthy.

Lessons from Him

I have learned many things from my grandfather. He has taught me to be kind, to work hard, and to be curious about the world. He says that learning never stops, no matter how old you are. He shows me that you can have fun at any age and that it’s important to laugh.

In conclusion, my grandfather is a special person. He’s wise, kind, and full of stories. He loves his family and takes care of his health. He enjoys his hobbies and teaches me important lessons. I love him very much and I feel lucky to have him in my life. He’s not just my grandfather; he’s my friend and my teacher too.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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"My Grandfather's Passing"

University of Michigan

3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

250 - 650 words

My grandmother’s concern faded rather quickly as sirens fell distant and time passed.

After about 30 minutes, my grandfather’s friend ran toward the beach. My grandfather was not next to him. He was not there at all. At that moment, my grandma knew.

“Burt...he was with me...he slipped...he fell...I ran down the side of the mountain, off the trail, but I couldn’t find him. The park rangers are looking...” She stopped listening. She could see his lips moving, yet she heard nothing.

Why This Essay Works:

What they might change:.

Too Repetitive : This essay repeats a lot of the same ideas or information, just using different words. Rather than "getting to the point," this repetition makes the essay feel meandering and like it is going nowhere ultimately. When drafting your essay, it is okay to have repetition (your drafts shouldn't be perfect, after all). But when editing, ask yourself with each sentence: does this add something new? Is this necessary to my main point? If not, you should exclude those sentences.
Unnecessary Exposition : This essay starts off with a drawn-out story of the tragedy involving the author's grandfather. Most of this story is unnecessary, because all that really matters for this student's main idea is the fact that their grandfather passed away from a tragic accident. Details about his grandmother or his grandfather's best friend are unnecessary and distracting.
Doesn't Write From Their Perspective : An important "rule" in college essays is to only write from your perspective. That is, don't describe things that you couldn't have seen or experienced. In this essay, the author spends a lot of time describing their grandfather's incident as if they was there to witness it. But we later learn that the author was not even alive at this point, so how could they be describing these things? On a smaller level, don't describe yourself from an outside perspective. For example, instead of, "I grimaced when I heard the news" (how did you see yourself grimace?) you could say, "I felt my stomach pang when I heard the news."
Lacks Reflection and Interesting Ideas : Your ideas are most valuable in your essays. Admissions officers want to see how you think, and having interesting ideas that are unique to you is how you demonstrate that you're thoughtful and insightful. Avoid surface-level ideas at all costs, as it comes off cliché. It is okay to start with more generic ideas, but you should always delve deeper. To get at deeper and more unique ideas, the key is to ask yourself questions. For example: Why is this the case? Why don't things work differently? What does this mean for other people? What does this represent? How can I apply this to other areas of life?

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My Grandfather, My Inspiration Reflection Essay Example

Everyone admires a person as they grow up and experience different things in life. While many people may admire celebrities and influential people in society, I find that it's easier to admire someone that you know because you have a personal relationship with the person. When it comes to me, the person that I admire the most is my grandfather. We all have people whom we consider to be inspirational and influential to look upon, and I believe that my grandfather is an outstanding example of these characteristics. He is an admirable person in my life because he is a charitable person, high-spirited and hardworking.

One thing I admire the most about my grandfather is his charitability, which he has shown numerous times in his life. My grandfather goes out of his way to help others without them asking. Despite having four children, my grandfather still helped others as he believes that it is important to see others succeed in their tasks. He has sponsored numerous people through university as well as their post-graduate studies. For example, my grandfather sponsored a parish priest in Nigeria to obtain his postgraduate degree in England. I hold great admiration for my grandfather because he’s shown me that it’s important to care for others as the well-being and success of those around me will directly affect me.

My grandfather is also a high-spirited person who doesn't let negative circumstances weigh him down. Even when a situation isn’t in favour of my grandfather, he always tries to find the good. Whenever I’m with my grandfather, there’s never a dull moment with him, he can cheer people up and lift their spirits when they’re feeling down. He spent several years as the chairman of the parish pastoral council of his local church. As a result of his role, he was constantly counselling people and giving them ways to remain positive and happy despite the challenges they were facing at the time. Thanks to this, I always try to help others whenever they are in a situation that requires giving them advice and even in bad situations, I look for lessons that I can learn and apply in the future.

An additional reason why I admire my grandfather is because of his diligence and hardworking nature. Many times in my grandfather’s life, he’s had to work his way to success and living comfortably. After going abroad for university, my grandfather returned to Nigeria and started his engineering company. After working many years, he was able to work with organizations such as FIFA and worked with the Nigerian government. As a result of his success, he was able to live comfortably and raise his kids comfortably. When he explained to me how he was able to grow his company, it displayed the importance of diligence and hard work. Through him, I’ve learned to perform tasks to the best of my ability.

The existence of inspiring people such as my grandfather helps make our lives better and mould us into the best version of ourselves. My grandfather is a charitable person, high-spirited and is hardworking. Throughout the years, I have learned many things from him which have helped me become a finer person.

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What My Grandmother Knew About Dying

By Rachael Bedard

An illustration of an older hand holding a younger hand.

There are essentially two kinds of physicians: those who want to fix things and those who want to help people deal with things that can’t be fixed. I became a geriatrician and palliative-care doctor because I like being with people when the hard stuff goes down. I like organizing a plan, untangling the knot of someone’s suffering even just a bit. I like having something to offer.

What I understood after a few years of taking care of the very sick and dying is that most people can’t say what they want or what they care about when they’re nearing the end: they’re overwhelmed, or in pain, or delirious. If you’re going to be useful to someone in that moment, it’s best if you’ve talked beforehand about what might happen. I learned to gently engage people in picturing their own decline and near-demise, and to ask what would be most important to them in those moments. Would they want to die at home, receive CPR, have a feeding tube? Would they prefer to be with certain people, to be blessed with certain prayers, to listen to a specific song?

I’ve been with families for some very nice deaths, planned to perfection like weddings. One older woman I adored, whom I’ll call Ellen, died at home, surrounded by roses, dressed in a fur coat—ideal. I felt good about how clear and firm I had been in articulating the reality of Ellen’s prognosis, and proud of the things that her daughters and I arranged to make her final weeks meaningful and comfortable: manicures, favorite movies, photo albums, and opioids. Ellen got it all because she didn’t shrink from existential distress. She died having told all her grandchildren that she loved them, in letters that she took the time to write and leave in envelopes in her desk.

In my family, it’s different. No one has shared a vision for the end of their lives, or written a living will. I’ve failed entirely to get conversations about these things going—partly for the same reasons that surgeons don’t operate on their loved ones, but largely because, in my family, there is a staunch refusal to acknowledge the mortal coil. My close relatives barely acknowledge having bodies. When felled by illness in various ways, they’re mystified but incurious, irritated but not despairing, and in utter disbelief that things can really go south.

My grandmother, Harriet, became engaged to my grandfather, Lou, after they’d dated for two weeks. Whenever anyone asked how she knew, she would say, “He was a hunk.” Lou was frequently ill and died at fifty-seven. I didn’t know Harriet then and can’t picture her grief, but she never dated anyone after him. She would speak of him with a very specific tenderness that conveyed, every time, that he was the love of her life.

She and Lou raised three kids in Toronto from the fifties to the seventies. When her kids were in their teens, she became obsessed with West Highland terriers, jaunty little white dogs. She had them first as pets, then became a breeder, and then got on the dog-show circuit, as a contender and a judge. When I was very little, she had a kennel in her basement, with puppies barking in pens. I could tug ropes on a pulley system to open the doors of the enclosures and let the terriers run free behind her house.

When she was in her mid-sixties, Harriet said enough with the dogs and decided to pursue acting. This wasn’t a hobby for her; it was a vocation, a dream she’d harbored since high school. She got an agent and started going to auditions. She was in several commercials and plays, and she has a reel on YouTube. Was she good? I honestly have no idea. Onstage, she always seemed so much like herself to me: robust, dramatic, annoying, self-involved, charismatic, loving. She took her jobs seriously and fretted when they dried up. She wanted to get cast enough times to qualify for a Canadian Actors’ Guild membership, and, eventually, she did.

About a decade ago, when she was eighty-four, Harriet was hospitalized for an elective procedure and suffered a string of serious complications. I flew home to see her in the intensive-care unit, where she was sitting with a non-invasive ventilation mask covering her face and forcing oxygen into her body. Many older patients in this situation become delirious, or at least anxious and scared. Not my grandmother. As I leaned in to take her hand, she pulled the mask away from her face with surprising strength and said, “Can you believe I’m in here? I was up for a part in ‘Dumb and Dumber 2.’ ”

That hospitalization lasted several weeks. Then Harriet recovered. She kept living alone. She seemed to be evading death by simply refusing to acknowledge its possibility. When I would visit, she would roll her eyes and say things like “Getting old is no fun, kiddo!” She would ask for my professional input as a physician into her various ailments, but then beam throughout my replies and listen to none of it. Her primary-care physician was old, too, and she felt that he was a very good doctor, but this was mostly because he always called on her birthday.

Most illness is experienced as a scatterplot of symptoms and challenges, not as a straight and sudden decline. This is what makes prognostication difficult and caretaking so gruelling: in addition to being sad, expensive, and exhausting, being responsible for a sick or aging loved one is also unpredictable. Our minds play tricks on us, so that signs of degeneration can go unnoticed for years and then come into focus as harbingers of doom. There are good days and bad ones, but it’s most important to keep your eye on the slope of the curve.

For a long while, Harriet’s curve was bending downward. She spent the pandemic in her apartment in Toronto, mostly alone. She relied on oxygen at night and sometimes during the day. She was also lucid, mentally energetic, and blessedly tech-savvy. She subsisted largely on maple cookies and crackers with marmalade. She was doing O.K., until she wasn’t.

At the end of January, Harriet was admitted to the hospital with new shortness of breath, initially attributed to an exacerbation of a chronic lung issue and a mild pneumonia. After a few days, she developed an internal bleed, and her blood count remained stubbornly low even after it was addressed. She needed blood transfusions as a result, and then diuresis so that her stiff heart would be able to handle the additional fluid.

The essence of geriatric medicine is the anticipation of cascading health problems like the ones that Harriet was facing. “Frail” is a colloquial term used to describe little old ladies, but frailty is also a clinical syndrome that affects more than just our bones and muscles. With time and stress, our internal organs and biological systems become worn, brittle, less resilient to infections and injuries, more susceptible to toxicities. Sick bodies usually have multiple problems, and, over time, these problems become intertwined. Heart failure leads to kidney failure, which worsens the heart failure, which makes breathing feel more labored. A mind that’s slipping away might mean that a person forgets how to provide their own basic hygiene, gets new infections, takes antibiotics, and becomes more confused from the medication’s side effects. When people speak of “dying of old age,” this type of spiral is usually what they mean. Aging alone doesn’t kill us.

After a week in the hospital, Harriet was too weak to sit up on the side of her bed. On the phone, her voice sounded faint and slow. My mother couldn’t visit her because of isolation protocols, and the hospital was stretched for staffing. As the days went on, I became more anxious not just that we might lose her but that we might lose her inside, alone, away from us. Her doctors kept looking for ways to fix her. I felt that I could see the big picture better than they could. She wasn’t going to be easily fixed, and I wanted to get her home.

I tried, with little success, to get Harriet to tell me what she wanted. Midway through her hospitalization, we discussed the prospect of a colonoscopy, which her doctors had proposed to look for another source of the bleeding. I thought the rationale for something so invasive was dubious, and that the potential complications were a clear reason to decline. Harriet wouldn’t say no, but she also wasn’t saying, as some of my patients have in the past, that she wanted to “do everything.” Instead she said she’d think about it, and asked how my baby was doing. “ Thank you for calling, my darling,” she said in her diminished voice, as we got off the phone.

Technically, Harriet’s attitude is called denial. But denial was one of her best survival strategies, a way of having a fine time even when things were not fine at all. This was a woman who loved being alive, even as her life became more constrained. Alone in the hospital, miserable, sleepless, barely eating, bruised and bleeding, she behaved as though she were merely unhappy, jet-lagged on a layover. Her will to live was primal and powerful. She was lucid through everything. She was a complete miracle in this way: her brain never got cloudy, because it refused to track the weather of her body.

At the end of the second week of Harriet’s hospitalization, my extended family met on Zoom to talk about bringing her home. She had received many medical interventions in the past ten days, but she was also worse than she had been upon entering the hospital in the first place. Twelve people representing two generations, ages twenty-nine to seventy, were on the call. Some were in Israel, some in the United States, some in Canada. A few of my cousins had been in touch with my grandmother every day for years, and her absence from the grid of faces was discomforting. No one wanted to have a meeting about Harriet without Harriet.

Family meetings are considered the palliative-care practitioner’s core procedure. An experienced facilitator listens more than she talks, and then summarizes, clarifies, and organizes; her job isn’t to tell the family what to do, but to help them articulate it for themselves. I forgot all my practiced communication techniques when speaking to my own family members, tripped up by my intimacy with the patient and with them. I monologued, with pauses for questions. I explained Harriet’s medical situation and emphasized that her doctors hadn’t found much that they could treat to cure. I talked about bringing her home to take care of her in the most essential sense: to feed her the soup she wanted from a specific Jewish restaurant, to cajole her into taking bites. I said we could always change our minds if things got much worse or much better. I didn’t know how long she had, but didn’t we want to be with her while we could? Everyone agreed that we did, not because I’d demonstrated skill in guiding them toward that decision, but because we all loved the same dynamic, maddening woman in the same devoted way. I booked a flight to Toronto that day.

The beautiful death at home —with luxuries, like roses or furs, or simply in comfort and safety—is hard to come by, even for those who want it. It’s almost impossible for people who do not have family or friends who can devote significant time and resources to caring for them; it’s completely impossible for people who do not have homes. It’s sometimes impossible for reasons related to the dying process itself: a person can be suffering too much to be treated safely at home, or need the attention of more people than a family can afford to have at the bedside. In the U.S., if you elect to enroll in home hospice, you typically must forgo any interventions that are considered disease-modifying or life-extending. This is a choice forced by health-care economics and reductive ideas about the line between living and dying. Practically, it means that people delay preparing for death at home so they can continue to receive physical therapy, or try one more round of chemo.

Harriet, in her refusal to engage with goals of care, hadn’t articulated a wish for the beautiful death at home. Nonetheless, I hoped one was possible. She was dwindling, not suffering. We had plenty of family around interested in taking part in her care. Her apartment could be reconfigured to accommodate new ways of living. We could afford to supplement the services provided by Ontario’s public-insurance benefits, which are more flexible and generous than what one typically gets in the U.S., and we had a network of contacts who could help us get what we needed even in the midst of the pandemic. Still, it took days to organize the hospital bed, the commode, the aides who would teach us to care for her body, the referrals from social work, the prescriptions, the appointments. During that time, Harriet remained in the hospital, getting weaker.

Four of us went over to the apartment to prepare for her return. We paused as we organized her room to show one another the sublime and the ridiculous things that we found. Sublime: a letter that Lou’s dear friend had written to my mother and her siblings after Lou died, saying how much he had loved my grandfather. Ridiculous: a tiny clay pot filled with brooches shaped like sunglasses. Proustian: several bottles of White Shoulders perfume, all partially used.

Finally, Harriet came home. The most striking thing was how much she looked like her mother, whom I called Nanny Annie, who died at the age of ninety-five. Her facial structure seemed not just thinner or older but rearranged from her own; she looked exactly like Annie. I sent a photo to my cousins, who agreed that the resemblance was not just uncanny but new. None of us had seen it before. I had the strange sensation of being in a play in which an older performer replaces a younger one to show that time has passed.

The character in the bed was still Harriet, though, changed but undiminished. My sister Ella has said that our grandmother was always authentically herself, even if she was also constantly performing the role of herself, for her pleasure and ours. “That was a nightmare,” Harriet told me, referring to her time in the hospital. Her grip was stronger than I had imagined. She let me swab the dead skin off her lips and moisten her mouth with a little sponge on a stick; she let me gently wipe the gunk that had built up between her eyelashes and examine places where her skin was breaking down. “You’re a good doctor, Rach,” she said, as I helped her turn her tiny body.

She asked me to read her a draft of this essay, which I had started writing the night after we’d had the fraught conversation about the colonoscopy. We both teared up as I read, she when I mentioned my grandfather, I when I talked about her dying. She asked me to take out something I’d written that was “a secret.” But Harriet was pleased, and said she wanted the piece to be published. Over the next few days I listened to various family members sit with her, and heard her speak about the past more fulsomely than I remembered her doing before. She attended, without conscious intention, to what the palliative-care doctor Ira Byock has called the five tasks of the dying: saying I’m sorry, saying I forgive you, saying thank you, saying I love you, saying goodbye. She reminisced, and apologized for small and big things. She expressed satisfaction in the resolution of old conflicts. She said she missed my grandfather. She told everyone she loved them, and thanked us for taking care of her. When we’d try to leave her to rest, she’d hold our hands and tell us to stay. She didn’t want to miss anything.

About a week after Harriet came home, my mother called to tell me that her oxygen was low. Harriet looked weak over FaceTime. “Will I live?” she asked me, a more direct question than any she had ever posed before. “Well, not forever,” I joked. She smiled and said, “True.” She died at 2:45 A.M. the next day, holding hands with my aunt Nicki and Norma, the care worker who was spending the nights with her.

There is a current of personality in my family that extends from Harriet to her children to my sisters and cousins and me. I see it in my daughter, too. We all vibrate at a specific frequency, which we jokingly call the Life Force. We share a vigorous curiosity, a confident way of thinking, a sureness that we bring the action with us. At Harriet’s eightieth birthday party, in a private room at a chic downtown hotel, all her children and grandchildren raised their glasses and toasted her with the cry, “Big ups to the Life Force!” Everyone thought this was funny, and everyone meant it.

I have often remarked that I didn’t go into medicine to simply bear witness, but the work has a way of forcing you to do just that. Even with foresight and the most careful attention, you cannot plan on grace, or force closure; you cannot practice someone’s last words in advance. People die as they live and live as they are. Harriet didn’t intend to die at all, and yet she did so in a way that perfectly reflected her spirit and charisma. How did she manage it? To be with my immortal grandmother through her last breath made death and dying strange to me anew; in losing Harriet, I had never felt so close to her.

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Losing a grandfather.

Rylea and Kyle Comstock November 16, 2017

The following two essays were written by siblings Rylea and Kyle Comstock, reflecting on the loss of their beloved grandfather.

Rylea Comstock

It was December 23, 2016, a normal winter morning and one that I will never forget. It seemed like a typical morning, except that both my parents were home from work on a work day. That was a morning that will always be ingrained in me. It was a morning that brought me great sadness. This was the morning I found out that I had lost one of the greatest men in my life to a heart attack, which forever changed my family’s lives in more ways than one.

My grandpa was the life of every party he attended. We spent every holiday and birthday at his house, just hanging out and being together as a family. My grandpa loved playing music from his playlist. Every time one of his favorite songs came on, he would say “I love this song man,” and he would turn it up so loud you couldn’t even hear the person next to you. It seems that happened often, especially after a few drinks.

My grandpa would always manage to put a smile on people’s faces. I couldn’t name one person who disliked him, not even his ex-wife. Even though they were divorced they still maintained a great relationship. They become friends and communicated on all aspects of their children’s lives and their farm business. Most importantly, they were great grandparents together.

It’s hard to think that he won’t be there to see me grow into adulthood. He did not see me finally achieve getting my license. He won’t be there for pictures before my senior prom. He will not be able to attend my high school graduation or my wedding. But most of all, my grandpa won’t be able to meet my kids. One thought that gives me closure is that he will be with me in spirit, but it’s hard to not have him here anymore.

The Day My Grandfather Died

Kyle Comstock

December 22 2016: for some people it’s just another day or just three days before Christmas. But to me, it’s the day that my life took a turn for the worst, the day that tested my emotional strength, the day that my grandfather, Douglas Robert Comstock, passed away.

No one expected it: he was 68 years old and still living like he was 28. I had seen him just the day before, and he was a bit sick, but everyone in my family thought it was a cold because it was the middle of winter. He was full of life and we were talking about how we were going to have Christmas dinner at his house the 24th. I will never forget the last words I said to him: “See ya tomorrow Grandpa, I love you: ” At that time, I did not know that it would be the last time I would ever see him.

This caused so much emotional stress for my family for many reasons. One of them was that he was the head of the Comstock family for many years and he was the glue that held us together. There were so many family events that took place at his house. He also attended events at his ex wife’s (my grandmother’s) house and maintained a friendship with her despite not having a romantic relationship with her anymore. This shows just how good of a man he truly was. He touched the lives of so many people and showed me the meaning of what a real man is. He showed me that hard work and dedication can get you anything you want in life and that you can find happiness in any situation. The best example of this when immediately after breaking his rib and puncturing his lung in a four wheeler accident three years ago, he was still cracking jokes.

In the months following the tragic death of my grandfather, not even my parents knew that I was still having a hard time dealing with it and crying myself to sleep sometimes. Well, no one knew until my dad came to my room and saw me crying one night. He asked me what was wrong and I asked him how he got over grandpa dying. He said that it was hard for him to get over the death of his father and his role model, but he knew that he was still with him. He shared a story with me about the trip to Mexico that my parents and their friends had just gone on, about a bee that flew onto his drink. He told me that for some reason, when the bee was flying around him, it felt almost as if his father was still with him.

I did not experience full closure until July 22nd at my grandfather’s wake and ash burying ceremony, when I myself buried his ashes in the ground. It was at that point that I finally knew that he was in a better place and that everything would be okay. This experience, believe it or not, helped me and prepared me for future emotional stress and showed me that if I could get through this, I could get through anything.

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Comments (3)

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Deborah Lyman • Nov 18, 2017 at 1:58 pm

I love these tributes and I love the authors. There is such a special bond between many people and their grandparents. I am 100% sure that grandpa was very proud of these two.

Kay Comstock • Nov 17, 2017 at 9:46 pm

I am so proud of Rylea and Kyle, my niece and nephew, for writing this beautiful tribute to their grandfather and my brother. Doug was a great, honest and hard working man. He definitely was the glue that held his family together. We all miss him terribly. Thank you Rylea and Kyle. I love you Aunt Kay

Evelyn Alessi • Nov 17, 2017 at 8:43 pm

These essays are a wonderful tribute to your grandfather. I’m glad you will have many memories to comfort you.

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My Grandfather Essay for Students & Children [Easy Words*]

February 4, 2021 by Sandeep

My Grandfather Essay: My Grandfather’s name is Krishna Sreekar. He is 72 years old. He is a retired Executive Officer of a Steel Plant. He is quite fit and active for his age. My grandfather is very loving and caring as a person. He is the most respected figure in our family . He loves to read books. I love my grandfather and wish him good health.

Essay on My Grandfather 150 Words in English

We have provided My Grandfather Essay, usually given for class 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5.

My grandfather is an intriguing person. He has always been an important role model in my life. His name is Satish Kumar. He is seventy-five years old. He is always active and energetic throughout the day. Everyone in our family respects him. His love for us has no bounds. He has always been very caring and affectionate towards every person. My grandfather is a retired army officer. This is why he has always valued education and discipline in his life.

He is a strong-willed man. He never skips his morning walks . He wakes up early every day and goes for a brisk walk across our nearby park. After returning, he sits on the lawn and reads his favourite books. The love for food is common for both of us. We both enjoy each other’s company. He shares his stories with me. I can never be sad around him. My grandfather’s amiable nature always makes me feel happy. He is one of my best friends, and I love him. Every day I pray for his well-being and good health.

Essay on My Grandfather 400 Words in English

Below we have provided My Grandfather Essay, suitable for class 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 students.

“Love is the greatest gift that one generation can leave to another” ~ Richard Garnett

The above saying truly acknowledges the bond between grandparents and grandchildren. No matter how fast-paced this world becomes, this bond survives. Our grandparents are our biggest supporters in life. Now that I look back at the time, my grandfather has been the most influential person I’ve ever known.

My grandfather’s name is Shashank Paul. He is a very humble man. He has continuously been present in all the stages of my life. This year he turned seventy-nine. Despite his age, he is the most energetic member of our family. His jolly personality always brightens our mood. My grandfather acts like the root which binds our family all together.

My grandfather has multiple interests. He is very fond of gardening. Our backyard is filled with shrubs and herbs of all kinds. He is a great home cook. Often I watch him pick tomatoes from the garden and create innovative dishes for me. He says cooking is therapeutic. Being a retired headmaster of the Public School, books have been his pride possession.

His other hobbies include watching movies and listening to my grandmother’s songs. I feel lucky to be able to live with my grandparents. Whenever I got scolded by my mom or dad, my grandfather always comes to my rescue. We share a special bond. I always share my day to day stories with him.

Every weekend, we sit together and watch a horror movie. Once in a while, he lets me cook some dishes for him. Picnics are our favourite moments. My grandfather never lets me down. He encourages me to try out new things. Whenever I feel scared, a simple nod from him is enough to boost my confidence.

He considers me his best friend. And he feels like he is revisiting his childhood when I am with him. Our laughs are contagious. After his retirement, I am beginning to spend more time with him. Our bond keeps getting stronger with the passing time.

My Grandfather Essay In 150 words

In this essay, a student describes his grandfather, who is a wise, kind, and loving human being. He shares his experiences and knowledge with the student and has been an essential part of his life. The student admires his grandfather for his selflessness and love and hopes to be like him someday.

My Grand Father Essay In 150 words

1. Introduction Paragraph

As a student, I have been fortunate enough to have a grandfather who is the epitome of a wise, kind, and loving human being. My grandfather has been an essential part of my life, and I feel blessed to have him as my role model. He is a person who has lived through challenging times and has come out victorious.

2. Body Paragraphs

My grandfather is a man of integrity and honesty. He always taught me to be true to myself and others, and to always work hard for what I want in life. He shares his experiences and knowledge with me, which has helped me grow as a person.

He is a great listener and a fantastic storyteller. Whenever I feel down, he is always there to listen to me and offer me guidance. His stories about his life always inspire me to be a better person.

My grandfather has always been there for me, and I admire him for his selflessness and love. He is a person who believes in the power of family and has taught me the importance of staying connected with my loved ones.

Conclusion paragraph

In conclusion, my grandfather is a person who has made a significant impact on my life. I hope to be like him someday, wise, kind, and loving. I will always cherish the memories I have shared with him, and I am grateful for his presence in my life.

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

4 Sample Leave Application For Grandfather Death

Forced to Relive Childhood Horrors in Old Age

The oldest Ukrainians whose towns have been bombarded and overrun by Russia’s invasion have memories of similar miseries at the hands of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Among Ukrainians whose homes have been overrun by the Russian invasion, Halyna Semibratska, 101, is one of a small group who also survived Nazi occupation. Credit...

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By Emile Ducke and Evelina Riabenko

Photographs by Emile Ducke

May 20, 2024

When she first heard that Ukraine was under attack by an invading army, Halyna Semibratska, now 101 years old, was confused.

“It’s not the Germans who have attacked us?” Ms. Semibratska asked. No, her daughter, Iryna Malyk, 72, replied. This time it was their neighbor, Russia.

It came as a shock.

Ms. Semibratska is one of a small group of elderly Ukrainians who have lived through not one but multiple invasions.

As children and teenagers, they saw their land and people ravaged in World War II. German troops and tanks swept through in 1941, seizing Ukraine from the Soviet Union, already seen by many Ukrainians as an occupying force. The Soviets reconquered it in 1943 and 1944.

Since 2022, war has once again devastated some of the same towns and cities, and Russian forces are now making new inroads in the north and east. Like those in the 1940s, the invaders have set up new administrations in occupied lands, seized grain and other resources, sent in secret police, abducted community members and instilled torture and fear.

A pile of broken bricks and beams and two ruined vehicles lean against the bombed-out shell of a building.

For some Ukrainians, it has all happened within one lifetime — childhoods revisited in old age.

At her home in the port city of Kherson, which was seized by the Russians in 2022 and liberated later that year, Zinaida Tarasenko, 83, recounted how her mother protected her from the Germans who occupied their village, Osokorivka. She was a baby, but the violence she saw still returns in her dreams.

The Germans used the family’s home as a medical clinic: “My mother was pregnant. Germans forced her to clean their shoes, wash their uniform. They drank, sang songs.”

When Russian forces took Kherson two years ago, it was Ms. Tarasenko’s turn to protect her daughter, Olena, now 46, who was abducted from their home by Russian soldiers.

“They took her and kept her for a week. I walked around the whole of Kherson, like crazy, looking for her.”

Zinaida Tarasenko, 83, speaking about her daughter, Olena, 46.

She searched frantically for a week, crisscrossing the city, going to a different prison each day, asking for news of her daughter. Then Olena returned. “She was afraid. I didn’t ask her much. Just: ‘Did they beat you?’” But, she added, “She wouldn’t say much.”

After Kherson was liberated in late 2022, two other women, both World War II survivors, found themselves hospitalized in beds a few feet apart and quickly became friends.

One, Halyna Nutrashenko, 94, ended up in a Kherson hospital after a Russian rocket destroyed her home, leaving her “under the rubble, inside the house,” she said. “I had a house, but now I don’t.”

More than eight decades earlier, she witnessed the brutal Nazi occupation of her home village in the Odesa region. She remembers avoiding German soldiers; she had seen them beating children. They forced her father to labor as a metalworker.

Many others were taken away, including all of the local Jewish population. In total across Ukraine, around 1.5 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

“There were thousands of Jews in Odesa,” Ms. Nutrashenko recalled. “They gathered them and shot them. Some were shot and dropped into the river. We as children were curious and went everywhere to take a look. My mother warned me all the time not to go there: ‘The Germans will kill you too!’”

The life of her neighbor in the Kherson hospital, Yuliia Nikitenko, was shaped by violence even before World War II. The Soviets took her father away and executed him when she was 2 years old, during Stalin’s Great Purge.

“I was growing up in Velyka Oleksandrivka during the occupation,” she recalled, referring to a village in the Kherson region. “The Germans evicted us. We had a small, simple house in the center. They lived there. We moved to another house close to the forest.”

Eight decades later, it was Russian soldiers who came to her home. “They asked me to show my passport,” said Ms. Nikitenko, now 88. “I went to find it. One opened it, looked at it and said, ‘Get a Russian passport.’”

She declined. “I love Kherson and Ukraine.”

She did accept money given by the Russians, as she was no longer receiving her pension. It made her feel like a traitor, she said, “but how else would I survive?”

During World War II, Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, changed hands four times in pitched battles that demolished most of the city. Now, many buildings lie in ruins once again as shelling by Russian forces continues.

Anna Lapan, 100, a Jew from Kharkiv, was 18 the first time German forces attacked the city. As the bombing began, she and her family escaped aboard a cattle train taking them eastward. Her father was conscripted and killed near Stalingrad in 1943. Later that year, she returned to Kharkiv, after the Germans were pushed out for good.

“When the Germans arrived, they were at one end of the city, and we were leaving from the other end.”

Anna Lapan, 100.

Ms. Lapan was forced to flee the city again in 2022, when the Russian assault began. Her sister moved to Israel. Ms. Lapan spent three months sheltering in western Ukraine, and then returned to Kharkiv yet again.

Her home had been damaged and some of its scars remain. “There are still cracks in the house, we have not repaired them,” she said.

Ms. Semibratska, too, was 18 when Nazi forces entered her hometown, Nikopol, in southern Ukraine. She remembers the date: Aug. 17, 1941.

“They were going along a wide street with whole platoons,” she said, adding, “My grandfather dug a big ditch in the backyard and we spent our nights there.” One night, a shell hit the ditch, but the family survived.

For a time, the front line between Nazi and Soviet forces near Nikopol ran along the Dnipro river. Today, the same stretch of river divides Ukrainian and Russian troops. Ms. Semibratska remembered nights when German artillery fired from one bank of the Dnipro, and Soviet artillery from the opposite bank. “There was a lot of destruction.”

As she spoke, Ms. Semibratska sat on her bed in an apartment she shared with her daughter in Izium in eastern Ukraine, where she moved after World War II. When Russian forces began shelling Izium in 2022, days into their invasion, Ms. Semibratska stayed in the bed, paralyzed by fear and too frail to be moved to the basement.

“I couldn’t lift my mum, so I was sitting in the corridor under a load-bearing wall,” said Ms. Malyk, her daughter, now 72. “Everything was shaking.”

“What I faced with my daughter I can’t wish for anyone.”

Halyna Semibratska, 101, and her daughter Iryna Malyk, 72.

Ms. Semibratska couldn’t believe she was witnessing another invasion of her homeland, and this time by a neighboring, “brotherly” country. In a way, that made it seem worse than the war she had known before.

“I understand, even though I’m old,” she said. “I have kept my memory. I remember a lot. But now I can’t understand what’s going on. It’s not a war. It’s not a war, it’s an elimination.”

For the five months that Izium was under Russian occupation, they lived “without water, heating, electricity,” Ms. Semibratska said. With windows blown out, “we wore coats, scarves, hats, everything that we had, we put on.”

Unlike the Germans, who occupied Kyiv, the Russians were pushed back from the capital. But the once-quiet towns nearby soon became known worldwide for the horrors inflicted by Russian troops.

Yahidne, north of Kyiv, was occupied in the first days of the Russian invasion. A Russian soldier there forced Hanna Skrypak, 87, and her daughter into a school basement crammed with more than 300 people.

“I couldn’t get there because my leg had been broken before, I have problems with my back,” Ms. Skrypak recalled. “He grabbed my arms and pulled me there. ‘What are you doing? I can’t walk!’ They shoved me there anyway. There was no space to sit or lie, there was nothing.”

She was held for weeks in the basement. “There was no fresh air. I didn’t go out,” Ms. Skrypak said.

“17 people died in the basement. Among the people of my age only I survived. Now, I’m the oldest in the village.”

Hanna Skrypak, 87.

She had endured wartime occupation before. Ms. Skrypak was 4 years old when German troops reached her birthplace of Krasne, a neighboring village of Yahidne. When her mother went outside, she said, she would hide in a nook above the stove.

Her brother Ivan, 17, was taken to a forced labor camp in Germany. “He died of starvation there.” Another brother died at home, falling sick during the war. Many residents disappeared. “Some people hid in the swamp.”

Ten people died in the basement under the school during the weeks of Russian occupation in 2022, including another woman who survived World War II. That left Ms. Skrypak as the oldest resident of Yahidne, the last one with living memory of both wars.

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

The Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s talks with President Vladimir Putin of Russia were a show of solidarity between two autocrats battling Western pressure.

Ukraine asked the Biden administration to provide more intelligence on the position of Russian forces and military targets inside Russia.

NATO is inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces . The move could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war.

Putin’s Victory Narrative: The Russian leader’s message to his country appears to be taking hold : that Russia is fighting against the whole Western world — and winning.

A Boxing Win Offers Hope: The Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk became the world’s undisputed heavyweight champion, a victory that has lifted morale in a country struggling to contain Russian advances.

Frozen Russian Assets: As much as $300 billion in frozen Russian assets is piling up profits and interest income by the day. Now, Ukraine’s allies are considering how to use those gains to aid Kyiv .

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

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I ran away from a troubled teen program and escaped for good. This is my story

Lately, I’ve been having nightmares that I’m back in boarding school.

Each dream begins innocuously enough. I find myself walking down a hallway past classmates standing in line in the dining hall. Sometimes, one of them is suddenly tackled to the ground. They struggle under the weight of fellow student who tries to restrain them. Other times, I’m sitting in a corner with my eyes fixed on a blank wall as days stretch into weeks and months.

The faces are all a blur in the dreams, but the swirl of fear and distress, the pounding in my chest and the rage that I feel are sharp.

The dreams are more like memories, as tangible as they were to me in the days after my parents dropped me off at The DeSisto School in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and I began to realize that although I was surrounded by people, I was desperately alone.

I started watching the true crime documentary “ The Program,” directed by troubled teen program alum Katherine Kubler, at my sister-in-law’s recommendation. “You guys have to see this,” she said soon after it debuted, certain that my wife and I would have seen nothing like it.

As she laid out the documentary's details — a group of teens sent off to a behavior modification facility — I realized that she was describing a story that was not unlike the one I experienced as a teenager.

Like Kubler, I was a high school student when my parents determined that I was beyond their control. I’d been diagnosed with ADHD and was expelled from two schools, the second one being a military academy.

While Kubler experienced the shock of being taken away by strangers and dropped off at a school without any parental contact or explanation of where she was going, I actually picked out DeSisto.

After collecting me from the military school, my mother sat me down in her office, handed me a few brochures, and, to my surprise, told me to find the next school that I would go to.

Eventually, I came across one for DeSisto, which sold a story about a therapeutic environment for artistic kids who were misunderstood. The school featured images of a picturesque estate that drew me in.

I never suspected that within 48 hours of my arrival, I would be sobbing, pleading to be sent back home.

Erich Bartlebaugh

Not long after selecting DeSisto, I was driving up to an idyllic Massachusetts town nestled in the mountains. My mother, step-father and I spent my last night before I headed to DeSisto at a bed and breakfast. It was October, and I still remember the autumn leaves and their colors. I took a long bath in a clawfoot tub and savored a king-sized Snickers bar. I had a feeling it was going to be my last for a long time.

Immediately after entering the gated property, I realized I had landed in a new society, governed by new rules. The entire campus was in the middle of a two-week-long sit-in meeting, prompted by someone graffitiing the boys’ bathroom. Pressure was put on every student until someone confessed or was outed by a peer.

“Sit in” was the start of new vocabulary I became fluent in, reflective of DeSisto’s authoritarian streak.

Immediately after entering the gated property, I realized I had landed in a new society, governed by new rules.

Rather than friends, new kids were assigned “buddies.” Two students were paired together and responsible, by proxy, for whatever their buddy did or said. We could never be more than a hand’s reach away from a buddy or from another student, for that matter. We were required to travel in groups of three, the reason being that a pair could come up with a notion to run off, but adding an additional student into the mix undermined cohesion.

Every morning was anxiety ridden because of all the potential punishments.

If you broke the dress code or stained your outfit, you were "suited" and had to wear a formal suit, including tie and dress socks, until you were given reprieve. If the issue continued, you would be "sheeted," which meant you weren’t allowed to wear clothes — just a sheet tied like a toga.

“Ghosted” meant everyone had to ignore your presence. “Silenced” meant you weren’t allowed to make a sound. “No PC” meant you couldn’t have physical contact with anyone. “Hand held” meant you had to hold hands, sometimes for hours, no matter what tasks needed to be done.

During "limit structures," students were held to the ground by other students and verbally assaulted with personal jabs. The goal was to break a person down.

“Cornering” was DeSisto’s version of a time-out. We had to sit in a metal chair facing a corner. Once, I was cornered for 60 days. I was only able to get up to use the bathroom and eat. I was allowed limited access to showers. No phone calls with parents or interactions with other students. Nothing. I was so furious and despondent that, at some point, I began to rattle off the F-word over and over again. That was the only curse word we weren’t allowed to say. Each time I said it warranted a $1 penalty.

Then, there was the Farm, the prison of DeSisto. There, students lived separated from the rest of campus, deprived of all possessions including personal clothing. We couldn’t contact home. We had to do everything as a group — including bathroom time. Entire dorms were farmed at once. For example, if the nightly dorm meeting went past midnight because we couldn’t reach a group consensus, we all would be farmed. Happened all the time.

Once, I was withheld from seeing my parents because I was accused of violence for smacking my hand on a sofa during a dorm meeting. This was devastating, and a defining moment when I realized I had no freedom.

My days at DeSisto were tedious and toiling. I was there for just under three years, it still feels like a decade. Every day dragged, and every week and month was so painfully slow that I just lived day to day. I saw how the desperate circumstances took a toll on all of us.

Some of my fellow students went along with situations most would see as inappropriate in exchange for rewards and freedom. Students didn’t have access to television, but some of the administrators had them in their rooms. Once, a male staffer of the school invited two other boys and me to watch a movie in his quarters. He’d been sitting with his arms around them on the sofa when he asked me to come sit by him. I got a funny feeling and said no. I was never invited back. Later, as I tried to make sense of the things that happened there and connected with former students, I heard stories that confirmed my instincts weren’t wrong.

I became defiant, running away when I found my chances. I ran away from DeSisto three times. The first two times, I was dragged back in a van. My final time, I was determined.

I escaped out of the Farm’s bathroom window. It was the only window that opened in the building. I had convinced the sole staff member to let me close the bathroom door for privacy. As I crawled into the window, he opened the door and yelled. I looked back at him and jumped. I knew at that point I had to just keep running.

After three years at DeSisto, I ran off into the swampy woods beyond the school, my feet sinking into the mud as I chased after my freedom with little foresight about my next move. Nobody came far enough into the wetlands to find me. Since I was 18 when I ran, once I was off campus, they could not legally bring me back.

I hiked the main road into town, putting together a plan to ask for some quarters to make a call. I was able to contact an old employee named Luis, whom some of the students trusted. He agreed to pick me up at the Piggly Wiggly in town.

There’s a reason I didn’t call my parents. By the time I left, if there was one lesson I’d learned from my time at DeSisto, it was that I could not rely on them to understand. In “The Program,” Kubler explains her parents were conditioned into believing that anything negative she said about the program was a lie or manipulation. DeSisto’s parents were instructed on this, too. They were advised that if they took in their children after they ran away, their children would be expelled, and years of education — and tuition — would become null and void.

By the time I got to the parking lot, it was dark. I walked over to a trash can and found it had just been emptied and lined with a new bag, which I took and used as a sleeping bag. I spent my first night outside of DeSisto in almost three years, lying on a bench outside, hungry, thirsty and shivering.

So much had happened and changed since I was 15 years old and soaking in the clawfoot tub with a Snickers bar.

Founder Michael DeSisto died in 2003 and DeSisto itself shut down in 2004 after controversies, including fights with the state of Massachusetts over licensing and allegations of child abuse. The Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services wrote, in a complaint, the school “denies students basic human rights” through practices like strip searches and farming students.

In 2004, DeSisto was under state investigation for incidents including a staffer waiting more than 90 minutes to take a student to the hospital after she self-harmed and swallowed two razor blades, the Boston Globe reported at the time.

“We admit our response was less than adequate and we’ve dealt with it,” Frank McNear, the school’s director at the time, said at the time. “You’ve got a lot of kids with a lot of pathologies here. I won’t tell you we’re a perfect school, but we’re totally committed to addressing problems as they surface.”

I’ve lived so many different lives since leaving. I’ve spent most of my life trying to push the negative parts of my past aside and focus on moving forward.

But every once in a while, something pulls me back — terminology, a headline, and more recently, “The Program.” I’ve been told before that I display post-traumatic stress symptoms, but it wasn’t until recently that I connected my feelings, my anger, to my school experience.

I’ve started opening up about my feelings more in the years since I escaped, especially as other lawsuits against the school validate that I wasn’t just a teenager, dramatizing my experience to make my parents feel guilty. My concerns were valid. I've felt less alone.

Survivors, if you can call us that, tend to discuss it amongst themselves, but I never really shared the full extent with anyone outside of them, not even my wife.

Our community of former DeSisto students is more than plagued by the memories of what happened there. Too often, we are confronted by the concerning reality that DeSisto’s body of alumni is vulnerable to death by suicide. The death announcements of a familiar name or face continue to haunt us.

During COVID, I learned that my friend Sarah died by suicide. I still tear up when I think of her. She was a talented performer and an amazing illustrator. A group of us used to hang out after “meal jobs” were done, when we cleaned the dining room, washed the dishes and prepared for the next meal. She was full of life and laughter but struggled with self-esteem and low self worth. She was a really special and kind person.

In the decades after we left DeSisto, it’s my understanding that her struggle went on for years. She deserved better.

I can’t entirely say that my experience at DeSisto was all bad. The truth is, I really began my journey to adulthood there. I learned self-awareness, self-worth and work ethic. I learned responsibility for my actions as well as my emotions. But I also learned distrust, abandonment and the level at which my own vulnerability could be exploited.

But I can say that much of my life in the years since has felt like climbing out of a massive hole.

After a failed attempt at community college and many odd jobs, I found direction and put all my energy into graduating from art school. My relationship with my mom and stepdad was OK at this point, but everything was still unresolved. My biological dad and I spoke once every five years at this point.

I continued to struggle, but eventually, in my 20s, I got my bachelor’s. I learned to understand my parents more. I married and had two beautiful twin boys. I got divorced, I got sober and eventually, I found myself escaped from the black and away from the threat of tipping over the edge. In 2014, I learned what it was to have a real relationship with trust, love and respect. Seven years later, we welcomed our beautiful boy.

I look at my sons and see how different they are from one another — and see the similarities they have with the old me.

I worry about whether they will struggle the same ways I did, and what will I do — what can I do — if they do? Truth is, I could never imagine sending my kids away and frankly, I never would. But I also don’t have a clue what I could do as an alternative. If DeSisto was the wrong choice, what would the right one have been? Was I in that situation as a teen due to nurture or nature?

I appreciate my sons’ personalities and struggles. I so desperately want to make sure that they never feel alone. They are the faces I force my brain to sharpen in on of when the memories of DeSisto begin to creep in, threatening to blur my current reality. They are the ones that bring me back to my life.

Erich Bartlebaugh is the art director of creative for NBC NEWS and MSNBC. He lives in New York.

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When Trump gets dark, Biden goes light

What their campaign emails say about joe biden and donald trump, by chauncey devega.

Donald Trump’s fundraising emails and other communications show that he and his propagandists are masters of what I have termed “ horror politics .” Ultimately, Trump’s horror politics strategy is designed to terrify his MAGA people and other followers into supporting him as their savior and protector. Because Trump is ruled by an obsessive need for power and adoration, the support he seeks takes the form of lots of money from his followers, their undying loyalty to him, and voting him back into the White House where, as promised, he will become the country’s first dictator.

Trump’s fundraising emails and other communications are weapons in a struggle over emotions, information, the political battlefield, and the future of the country and its democracy and society.

In this political battlespace, how are President Biden and his campaign responding and maneuvering?

As seen with President Biden and his campaign’s fundraising emails, he is communicating a constant message of steady and responsible leadership. Biden's image is of a leader who fundamentally believes in the American project and its democratic institutions. Joe Biden is a fundamentally decent person who loves America and he and his strategists are making that the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

In what is almost an act of self-parody of the folksy grandfather, President Biden has even gone so far as to invite some of the everyday people who donate money to his campaign to an ice cream social with him and First Lady Jill Biden. President Obama is also helping his successor and friend by inviting one lucky donor via email to a special dinner:

Hey there, it's Barack Obama. You know how I feel: Reelecting my friends Joe and Kamala is reason enough to pitch in a few bucks. But today, we're sweetening the deal. Any supporter who donates to this email will have a chance to join me and President Biden in Los Angeles, California. Oh, and a couple of A-list movie stars will be there, too: George Clooney and Julia Roberts. You read that right. Joe, George, Julia, and I want to meet one lucky supporter (and their guest) in Hollywood. You don’t want to miss out on this. Chip in $25 to Team Biden-Harris right now to be automatically entered to win this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

President Biden was even more folksy and nostalgic in this fundraising email his campaign recently sent out in which he invoked his beloved grandfather:

Folks — One thing my grandpop used to say is "Joey, nobody is more worthy than you, and everybody is your equal," and it still resonates with me. When I wake up in the morning and shut my eyes at night I'm thinking about ways to fight for the American people, to protect fundamental rights, and to defend our democracy.

Many of Biden's fundraising emails are just so…. nice (one even included two cute drawings of the sun). It is highly doubtful that being nice will defeat Trumpism and the MAGA movement.

A review of the Biden fundraising and other campaign emails I have received these last few weeks does show some increased urgency about the existential threat that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement represent to American society. However, even this increased level of urgency is rather uninspired and uninteresting. For example, one fundraising email featured an embedded gif of President Biden that looks like a bad hologram or an effort to communicate from another dimension.

We need your help to stay independent

President Biden and his campaign strategists are now taking Donald Trump to task for his support of Republican Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who shot her family dog , a puppy, to death and then, like a serial killer in training, bragged about the heinous act in her new book.

President Biden’s campaign sent out this email last week:

Trump Defends Kristi Noem’s Puppy Killing At the Biden campaign, we are proudly anti-puppy killing On the same day Joe Biden stood up for American workers, Donald Trump chose to take a break from visiting freshman pledges and his personal issues to give an interview to the Clay and Buck Show. On Kristi Noem’s puppy execution (which she has doubled down on), Trump had this to say: “Until this week, she was doing incredibly well and she got hit hard and sometimes you do books and you have some guy writing a book and you maybe don't read it as carefully. You have ghost writers… No, she's terrific. Look, she's been a supporter of mine from day one. She did a great job as Governor… the dog story, you know, people hear that and people from different parts of the country probably feel a little bit differently, but that's a tough story and– but she's a terrific person.” The following is a statement from Biden-Harris 2024 Spokesperson James Singer: “At the Biden campaign, we are proudly anti-puppy-killing and don’t think those who murder puppies are ‘terrific.’”

Fundraising emails target existing supporters and those who the campaign believes are persuadable. Most voters will not be moved by this messaging or even be exposed to it. Only a small number of people who receive emails will donate. In terms of money raised, Biden’s fundraising has been much more effective than Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s. However, these fundraising emails reflect the larger campaign strategy and the type of story each candidate and their surrogates are trying to tell the American people.

Whose supporters appear to be more energized?

Donald Trump’s hush money and other criminal trials were supposed to significantly blunt and weaken his support. That has not yet happened .

Polls continue to show a virtual tie between President Biden and Donald Trump. In what should be a serious warning for President Biden, public opinion polls have consistently shown that he is losing in the key battleground states. Even more concerning for President Biden and the Democrats is how new public opinion research shows that there is a lack of support for Biden specifically, and not for the Democratic Party’s other candidates.

In a new essay at The American Prospect , Harold Meyerson explains:

The chief effect of The New York Times’ release yesterday of its latest swing-state poll has been to raise Democrats’ already high anxiety levels about their presumptive presidential nominee. Not about his achievements in office or his policies; the support for those is evident in voters’ support for down-ticket Democrats who’ve consistently voted to approve Joe Biden’s legislative initiatives. If this fish stinks, it’s only at the head. What the Times/Siena poll of seven swing states made clear was that every Democratic senator up for re-election in those states had a clear lead over their Republican opponents, while the president was trailing Trump in six of those seven. It’s among those groups of Americans who’ve long been part of the Democratic base—Blacks, Latinos, and the young—that Biden has hemorrhaged support. These groups make up a disproportionate share of the financially strapped, which highlights the need for Biden to highlight much more than he has his initiatives to bring down the costs of medicines and the junk fees that corporations inflict on consumers. And yet these are themes that Biden regularly sounds. Part of his problem is that this message has yet to penetrate to low-information voters. But part of his problem is also that he’s frequently on mute, stepping on his own delivery, coming across predominantly as old. As a result, the quantity of his public announcements is restricted by his handlers’ concern for the quality of them.

As his campaign emails show, Biden’s messaging needs to improve. If the 2024 election is truly an existential one for the future of American democracy – a theme that President Biden and his spokespeople and surrogates are emphasizing – Biden’s fundraising and other communications need to have the energy and powerful narrative that such a reality demands.

In an excellent new essay at the New York Times , political scientist Stephen Fish highlights how the Democratic Party and its leaders’ communication and leadership styles put them at a marked disadvantage in a battle with Donald Trump, the Republican Party and the neofascist movement:

Psychologists have noted the effectiveness of dominance in elections and governing. My recent research also finds that what I call Mr. Trump’s “high-dominance strategy” is far and away his most formidable asset. High-dominance leaders shape reality. They embrace conflict, chafe at playing defense and exhibit self-assurance even in pursuit of unpopular goals. By contrast, low-dominance leaders accept reality as it is and shun conflict. They tell people what they think they want to hear and prefer mollification to confrontation. Today’s Republicans are all about dominance. They embrace us-versus-them framing, double down on controversial statements and take risks. Today’s Democrats often recoil from “othering” opponents and back down after ruffling feathers. They have grown obsessively risk-averse, poll-driven, allergic to engaging on hot-button issues (except perhaps abortion) — and more than a little boring….

Fish continues:

Politicians’ language reflects their dominance orientations. Mr. Trump uses entertaining and provocative parlance and calls opponents — and even allies — weak, gutless and pathetic. Still, neuroscientists monitoring listeners’ brain activity while they watched televised debates found that audiences — not just Mr. Trump’s followers — delighted in the belittling nicknames he uses for his opponents. His boldness and provocations held audience attention at a much higher level than his opponents’ play-it-safe recitations of their policy stances and résumés. Mr. Trump is also often crude and regularly injects falsehoods into his comments. But these are not in and of themselves signs of dominance; it’s just that the Democrats’ inability to effectively respond makes them appear weak by comparison.

One can reasonably describe Donald Trump and his MAGA fascist movement as one of the worst things to ever happen to the United States (these are actually self-inflicted wounds). In addition, one can focus in on Donald Trump, both the man and the symbol, as having no redeeming qualities and as embodying almost everything wrong with American society. As I have repeatedly warned (and will continue to) in my more than eight years of writing about the Trumpocene and the larger democracy crisis: sick societies produce sick leaders – and American society and Donald Trump are very sick, indeed.

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With all that having been noted, one cannot say that Trump (and by extension the larger right-wing propaganda disinformation machine) is not a compelling storyteller for his followers and supporters – and apparently, per the polls, a not insignificant number of other Americans as well.

As I am writing this essay, Donald Trump’s campaign sent out another fundraising email:

I will always love you… Please read the letter I wrote last night! NOW is the time to help me SAVE AMERICA You are truly a special Patriot, and I really mean that. You are the only reason I’m still running for President! They’ve thrown everything at me: Hoaxes, Witch Hunts, Impeachments, Indictments, Raids, and ARRESTS! But you never left my side. NOT EVER! So this letter goes out to every single member of the MAGA Movement… I WILL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

Earlier today, Trump sent out this fundraising email:

Friend, before I do anything else, I had to get this off my chest: THANK YOU! Watching Crooked Joe Biden destroy our country makes me SICK. I’m stuck in courtrooms, enduring WITCH HUNTS, and every day I see the Fake News push LIES AFTER LIES AFTER LIES! But it’s people like you who keep this movement alive. To be completely honest: Without your support, America would’ve been dead & gone a long time ago. But right now my campaign is at its most critical moment. My mid-month deadline is TOMORROW, and Joe Biden is raking in MILLIONS to destroy our movement. So if you’ve EVER voted for me, I have one humble ask: Can I count on you to chip in any amount before midnight and proudly proclaim: I STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP! STAND WITH TRUMP I truly mean it, supporters like you keep me in the fight. And I know it will be your support - right here, right now - that will get us through this dark moment in history. Please stand with me before my critical deadline. I know with you by my side, WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

President Biden in his fundraising and campaign emails – at least the ones I have received — has offered little that is as compelling, engaging, and yes, entertaining.

President Biden and his spokespeople and surrogates need to display much more fire and fight. “When they go low, we go high” will not defeat Donald Trump and the neofascist MAGA movement and their forces in 2024. It didn’t even work in 2016.

The Democrats are obsessed with winning the argument based on the facts and the policies. Republicans, however, know that political arguments are actually mostly won based on emotions and storytelling.

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Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com . He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show . Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook .