My father had a massive stroke one morning in 2002 as he was getting ready to go play tennis. In the hospital he had severe brain swelling and was clearly in t

My father had a massive stroke one morning in 2002 as he was getting ready to go play tennis. In the hospital he had severe brain swelling and was clearly in tremendous pain. His wife — his second wife, not my mother, and roughly a dozen years younger than he was — was not ready to let him go, despite his pleas that he be allowed to die. She fought heroically with the hospital staff, getting them to do various things they didn't think would help much, until he was recovered enough to go home (I don't recall how long that took — a couple of weeks, I guess, or more). He lived another two and a half years or so, but he was pretty miserable the whole time. I could admire her tenacity in keeping him alive, but it's very clear she did it for herself, because she needed to get used to the idea of him dying, not for him.