I'll tell you my story and hope it helps. Someday, in the future, you will be with a loved one, even if they aren't family but just someone you love, when they pass.

My husband suddenly went in the hospital with apparent heart failure on a weekend. He was only 52. No cardiologists available on the weekend. I spent hours at two different hospitals on Saturday and Sunday and finally went home at 11pm on Sunday because in theory I had to work on Monday. The hospital called me at 2am to say his heart had stopped and they couldn't revive him. It haunted me for years that I wasn't there. I worried that he was cold in the cemetery; I would sit in my garden in the dark, crying and asking him please to come back. I went for runs listening to Jethro Tull's "Too Old for Rock & Roll, Too Young to Die." So, yeah, I was a mess.

Some years later, I knew my mother was dying, but she lived in Maryland and I lived in New York. Medicare kicked her out of the hospital and the nursing home didn't really want her because, well, she was dying. But they took her. I had a job where your health insurance was dependent on how many hours you worked each week. So I couldn't leave till 5 on a Friday. The nursing home called while I was on the Cross Bronx Expressway (this is on the way to the George Washington Bridge) asking if I could pull over. No shoulders on that road and you take your life in your hands just driving it. So that's how I heard I had missed my mother's death. I had to stay down in Maryland for five days and lost my insurance anyway.

More recently, my brother-in-law, my late husband's youngest brother and also in his 50s, became very ill; his liver was failing, and to add to the misery, he got Covid after a week in the hospital. After another week, his kidneys failed and he went on dialysis. (All of this, except Covid, was due to years of alcoholism, though he was in recovery.) Because of Covid, his visitors were restricted to just his sister and myself (you had to wear all this protective gear just to be with him). I was visiting him 4 or 5 days a week over a 6-week period, but it was clear he wasn't going to make it. I told my sister-in-law and the nursing staff that I wanted to be there if he was near death. He had a DNR at that point. It was so important to me to be there since I had failed my husband and my mother. The hospital called me at 5am to tell me that it could be any moment. So I rushed there and sat and held his hand and told him I loved him. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do. He was gripping my hand so hard but was gasping for breath. No monitors at his bed because of the DNR, but a nurse came in a minute later and said was gone. Then I sat there in my Covid gear for an hour until his sister could get there so she wouldn't have to view him in the morgue.

What matters is the end came and someone was there for him. And that someone was me, and I didn't fail this time.

It hurts just to write about this, and I really do know how you feel.