> honour in a valiant fight to the end Having recently witnessed my grandfather's slow decay into ultimately death from up close (living next door), I can say

> honour in a valiant fight to the end Having recently witnessed my grandfather's slow decay into ultimately death from up close (living next door), I can say with conviction that there's no "honour" in "fighting to the end". He went from having developed trouble walking to laying stiffly in bed blankly staring ahead in just a month and one ER trip + hospital stay. He then stayed in bed for just under two years only occasionally moaning or grunting quietly gradually losing the last bit of his muscle mass with the only exceptions being: - getting sponge-bathed by a visiting nurse, my uncle or my father, - getting put on the toilet chair to pee/take a dump if it didn't already wind up in his diapers while laying in the bed, - getting wheelchaired over to the table in the next room to get fed some pureed mush that was (almost always) the same as the lunch/dinner my Grandmother was having, - etc. one can get the idea > Both also had huge support from loving family and friends, the way it should be. Having the support from the family involved basically putting their lives on hold for ~2 years. They always had to be there every single day to take care of one thing or another and watching my grandma take that for granted was frankly disgusting to witness. I was roped into plenty of tasks as well but thankfully one of the things I could avoid was having to wipe my grandpa's ass or bathing him. When my grandpa finally died in his sleep one night I wasn't really sad. I was more relieved that he wouldn't have to suffer anymore - my mother and I sometimes wondered if even in his mental state (severe dementia, basically a drooling vegetable) his occasional refusal to open his mouth during feeding was the only little bit control he could exercise, even though he was then just force-fed instead by prying his mouth open enough to get the spoon in. And the thing is, my grandfather was a VERY prideful man with strict principles during his conscious life. Going by what I remember from that time, he would've despised being in that position. TL;DR: romanticizing long drawn-out physical and mental decay as some sort of "valiant fight" is just wrong and taking "huge support from family and friends" for granted during such death-spirals is frankly a disgusting attitude.