The Saddest Thing

[TarnishedPenny]

What is the saddest thing you have ever seen or experienced yourself?

In my case, it was going for a walk in a nature park and finding the remnants of a child’s helium party balloon hanging from the branch of a tree. Tied to it was a hand-written note from a couple to their runaway son, telling him that they loved him and that he would always be welcome back home. The two had clearly been sending these out on the wind…

 

[onehitwanda]

The two worst.

Firstly, Watching an eighteen year old have a heart attack and being powerless to do anything to help. While the first aiders were trying to keep him alive with CPR I ran as fast as I ever have run anywhere to get to the road and flag down the ambulance who were struggling to find us and guide it down through the maze of parking spaces to where we were trying to revive him, but we heard later he didn't make it. The look on his younger sisters face while she watched all this was... horrible.

Secondly... reading a noticeboard at a local community center. It was nearly Christmas; a young mum had written this note, asking if anyone would be kind enough to donate food and cutlery so she could show social services she had enough food in the fridge to make Christmas dinner and maybe, just maybe, have her six and four year old boys over so she could see them again. For Christmas. It's been sixteen years and it still breaks my heart and now I'm crying again.

 

[KeithD]

Driving the Natchez Trace down to New Orleans. the face of a groundhog popped up in front of the car, with no chance I wouldn't hit it. I clearly saw the expression on the groundhog's face and it clearly saw mine, and at that moment it wasn't just a groundhog and we both knew . . .

Just the response that comes directly to mind. I mourned all the way to New Orleans, and it pretty much wiped out the enjoyment of the vacation there.

 

[NoTalentHack]

The morning after my first wife left.

My wedding ring had been sort of a fidget toy for me. I’d put my thumb on it and wiggle it; it was a reminder that someone loved me, that there was a stable point in my life no matter what happened. She had gone on a weekend trip, and I knew that she was making up her mind about whether she’d stay in our marriage or not; there was no infidelity or anything else, we had just grown apart. When she came back, she told me we were done: no counseling, no chance she’d change her mind. I took my ring off when she left that night.

I had had the weekend to come to terms with what was likely to happen. I even drew up a contract for her to sign, what each of us would get, etc. It was something to do, other than rage and weep. I thought I was, if not okay, then stable. I went to bed, sad but resolved.

I woke up and the first thing I did, as most mornings, was to move my thumb to my ring finger and press down on the symbol of what was supposed to be an eternal love. And it wasn’t there. And she wasn’t there. And she never would be again. I laid in bed for I don’t know how long sobbing, really understanding for the first time that I was alone, and that I had been for a long while.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

What is the saddest thing you have ever seen or experienced yourself?

Ok. I may hate myself for telling this story, but. I dunno, for some reason I do.

I worked as a crisis clinician previously and that included helping first responders.
I got a call to help after a house fire because the mom was a flight attendant and was at a different airport, but was being flown back to our little regional airport. She'd been told there was a fire, but the message had gotten garbled.
She thought her house had burned, but her husband and daughter made it out ok.
But it was her mother's house, and neither she nor her two other daughters survived.
The daughter who was not at the grandmother's house had been grounded, for some relatively minor teenage thing.
The mom got to the regional airport already talking about how she was relieved everyone was ok, and yeah it sucked that her house burned, but that's what insurance is for, and it'd be ok.
The firefighter broke down just trying to tell her. I was able to get the words out, but lost it in my car following them to her house.

 

[MrPixel]

First, a little background. My very favorite teacher was in my second grade. She was the one who saw my potential, that I was reading at adult levels, that I had math skills four grades ahead, that I was an unrealized very talented musician. She would stay after school for an hour or two nearly every day to make certain that I was learning to my capacity. She obviously cared for me greatly, and I her, and I kept up with her into high school. I even dated her daughter - my age, and a classmate - a couple of times in high school, but it was a little awkward because I was her brother, at least in spirit.

Rewind slightly to 8th grade. Mrs. K since changed her teaching priorities to special education, doing everything in her amazing powers to integrate the lesser of us into society - the deaf, the blind, the palsied, the thalidomide babies, the grotesquely deformed - children who, at the time, were hidden and warehoused in sanitariums and mental hospitals. The unseen. The school district was slightly ahead of its time, and built a special schooling facility for these rejects from polite society, constructed on my junior high schools campus. Mrs. K was in charge, and realizing I was on campus, sent a note to my principal to invite me to visit the separately-fenced facility.

I was thrilled to see Mrs. K in a classroom again, at my school. She introduced me to some of the more capable children, who understandably shocked this 12-year-old as to the degree of their disability. But it was the one, who I met slightly later in my visit, this hopelessly gnarled young girl, probably about my age, who was sliding around the room on a platform on skate wheels, barely mobile, her wanting eyes in her contorted face seeking mine. She vocalized something the best she could manage to greet me, and reached her emaciated arm and hand out for a simple human touch. It was too, too overwhelming for this 8th-grader; I reeled back in fear and a lack of understanding. I was nowhere close to emotionally prepared for this kind of reality. I never visited Mrs. K at school again, though we still kept in touch outside of school.

I look back on this as the saddest moment of my life, and deeply regret my own failing to touch and engage this fellow human desperately in need of the most basic acknowledgement that they existed. I wonder to this day what became of her, and weep in the recollection and regret, every time I think of her.

 

[CarlyAnn]

I see a lot of sadness in my line of work but this past Tuesday was certainly one of the worst. A nurse who works at the same hospital as I do murdered her three children due to Post Partum Psychosis. She had taken a leave of absence and her husband was working at home. He went out for 25 minutes to pick up take out and she killed two of her kids….the third child died today.

 

[Lady2020]

Listening to men saying why theyre dissatisfied with their partner.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

A nurse who works at the same hospital as I do murdered her three children due to Post Partum Psychosis

Damn. You have my sympathy. That's a shocking thing.

 

[Alitaptap]

When my sister was dying of cancer, she was 22 at that time, she told us to do everything to keep her alive since she was waiting for him. He flew in from the States to be with her. And every night at the hospital, he slept beside her on her bed, in each other’s arms. For the last four days of her life, that’s how they were, in each other’s embrace, holding each other’s hands. And that’s also how she left us, him embracing her, all of us in the family, embracing them.

It was the saddest, most painful and most beautiful thing I have ever experienced in my life. A love so pure and unconditional.

He is still my brother, and I see him every so often as we check up on each other. He had some rough years after that and never married, although he’s had a couple of relationships after her. But now, he is living the life she always wanted for him, going after his dreams, watching over us younger ones as time goes by.

 

[Comshaw]

1) I'm a Vietnam vet. No I wasn't black ops or even combat arms. I was an artillery mechanic. I worked on heavy artillery, self propelled 8" howitzers and 175mm guns. My introduction to what war was came on the first day I was sent to a fire base to work on one of those guns. We were in convoy on a dirt road approaching a village. As we got closer I saw what I thought was a pile of logs next to the road with people standing behind the pile. When we got close enough I realized the pile wasn't logs, but blackened bloated bodies of NVA and VC soldiers. They had been stacked there so the relatives could claim them. As we passed I got a good look at the faces of those standing behind the pile waiting for us to pass so they could claim a body. Those faces and the expressions on them were indelibly seared into my mind.

2) My son was a police detective for 5 years. The reason only five years is he works for a small department and they rotate all the officers through the detective slot. I went over to see him one day and found him sitting in the dark drinking. We talked about minor stuff for a while until finally I got him to open up. He had just finished with a case of a two year old being beaten to death by his grandmother. As he told me the story he had to stop from time to time because he could get it out between the sobs. It hurt me and I was only experiencing it second hand through him. I've never seen my son so grief stricken and I hope I never do again. But if he needs me, needs to takll I'll always be there. No matter how much it hurts me, it's hurting him tenfold more.


Comshaw

 

[BelleCanzuto]

He had just finished with a case of a two year old being beaten to death by his grandmother

I also did crisis intervention in the local jail. When anyone got booked in, there was a screening done for suicide risk, and anyone past a certain score automatically got referred for an assessment with me. I'll never forget the guy who beat his seven year old stepson to death telling me the kid deserved it because his mom had made the guy mad.

It's not the saddest thing I've experienced, but it's the moment it crystallized in my mind and heart that evil exists, and it's got nothing to do with the devil.
I hope your son got good support. Too many first responders carry around too much trauma.

 

[WyreBendr0417]

Some years ago, I was driving home from work and came upon an accident just after it happened. A car on the other side of the divided highway I was travelling changed lanes without looking, and forced a motorcycle with two guys onboard into the median, where they struck a cable barrier, cutting the driver in half at the waist. His friend was kneeling beside him, holding his hand and screaming loud enough to hear over the passing traffic. The driver of the offending car did not stop.

I later found out the man who died was a father and a very well liked school teacher. There were at least a dozen cars pulled over doing what they could until emergency services got there, so I went on. I've always felt bad for not stopping.

 

[Bramblethorn]

There are a couple of family ones but those involve more personal information than I want to share here.

Aside from those, the time we got a midnight phone call from the cops to say that our friend had suddenly died and could we come over to be with her husband? A bunch of our mutual friends were still up and online (night owls, different time zones) but we couldn't say anything to them until her family had been notified. So there I was online at 3 am after I got back from his place, politely deflecting people who were asking why I was still awake, and thinking about what I was going to say to them in the morning.

That feeling of carrying somebody else's future grief, and knowing before they do that they're about to have their heart broken :-/

 

[nice90sguy]

the remnants of a child’s helium party balloon hanging from the branch of a tree. Tied to it was a hand-written note from a couple to their runaway son, telling him that they loved him and that he would always be welcome back home.

"The remnants of a child’s helium party balloon hung from the branch of a tree. Tied to it was a hand-written note from a couple to their son, telling him that they loved him and that he would always be welcome back home."


That's a whole story there. Wow.

 

[stickygirl]

I had to tell an old friend that a mutual acquaintance had died unexpectedly a couple of years previously. She was unaware and it was the first time I'd had to explain what had occurred to anyone. I was more of a mess than she was, because it brought the grief back in a huge wave. I should have been comforting her, but I got the cuddle - I'm still conflicted by how I reacted, with tears. Guess you can't plan for those things happening and to have rehearsed the words/scene in advance. Aspie thing. Still guilty for not being the strong one.

 

[KeithD]

The most lingering sadness for me has extended for more than two decades. One of my grandchildren was born on Christmas Eve with a hole in her heart and a very guarded prognosis. It was a scheduled birth, known to be a dangerous one, and we'd come to our son's/daughter-in-law's house to help with the older grandchild and to be there for Christmas. Our daughter-in-law came home that night, everyone exhausted from a traumatic day worrying about the new baby. My wife and I hadn't been at the hospital. We were at their home, taking care of the other granddaughter.

Early Christmas morning, my wife and I were awakened by our daughter-in-law screaming "I've got to see her before she goes" and she and my son tromping down the stairs and out of the house. My wife and I were left on Christmas morning with the other granddaughter thinking that the newborn was dying or had died. We were left all day without a call. Calling all of the hospitals in the area we knew about (we had no idea where the birth had happened; we were at home taking care of the other grandchild) didn't reveal our family being there. Late in the afternoon we finally found where they were but weren't given any information on the baby. I sent my wife off that hospital and remained taking care of the older grandchild, who was young enough not to know she should be expecting a Christmas present unwrap or that it was unusual her parents weren't there. Knowing folks would be home eventually, I also fixed a large prepare-ahead meal to be there when they returned, no matter what condition they would be in.

When my wife got to the right hospital and tracked the family down, she discovered that "I've got to see her before she goes" meant that the baby was being transferred to a hospital with better equipment, not that she was dead, and everyone (but us) were there at the hospital--the in-laws, the daughter-in-law's sister, even our own daughter, having come up from D.C. They all tromped home eventually to eat the dinner I'd prepared but not to say a word about leaving my wife and me in the dark all day.

No one had bothered to call us all Christmas Day. We went all day assuming the baby was dead and spent it trying to assure our other granddaughter that life was normal and nothing was wrong.

It's a sadness and hurt that we couldn't bring out in the open all these years with our son and his wife, but it's there and will never go away.

 

[Duleigh]

What is the saddest thing you have ever seen or experienced yourself?

A friend of mine, she was a doctor, a great doctor, she saved my life at one point. I had the entire hospital where she worked calling her Dr. Awesome. She was a great pulmonologist with a reputation that was known far and wide. Then COVID hit and she started losing patients and she couldn't take it. She let the hospital administrator know that she lost "one too many" and left. I've heard from her a few times, we swapped txt messages, but when you lose a brilliant mind like that because.... it's just heartbreaking.

 

[Cherry_Brandy]

The saddest thing I ever heard was from my mum she was within days of dying of cancer and in and out of consciousness. She'd always struggled with her weight and had done every exercise class and diet known to man the whole of her life. Even with cancer she never lost an ounce.

She very quietly told me that even with cancer she was going to die fat.

That upsets me to this day. Everytime I hear someone say larger ladies need to eat less and exercise more, I re-live that moment.

 

[PastMaster]

The saddest thing - I ever saw or had to do, was to tell the parents of a 15 year old that their son had died of meningitis. The father collapsed and had an MI - fortunately we were able to help him.

 

[Zootonius]

Not the saddest thing but,

The husband of my wife's friend passed away suddenly. I used to joke with her about the questionable value of men. That joke is now swept into the dustbin.

 

[Seadog777]

I cannot narrow it down to only one.
I've seen some absolutely horrible and gut-wrenching things in Africa and Asia.
I only talk about those with my therapist though.

Here's one for you.
I rolled up to an accident scene in Louisville, KY while my wife and I were on vacation visiting friends.
A man had a heart attack while driving. My wife was comforting his wife, while I performed CPR.
Hearing and seeing his wife watching me as I tried to bring him back to life, was something that still sticks with me to this day.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Holding our terminally ill cat as she died. Poor thing had an inoperable tumor sitting under her tongue and jaw and we could choose between seeing her starve to death or putting her out of her misery. Her death hit me much harder than my dad's.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I spent ten years in the US Coast Guard.
During a boarding of a Haitian migrant vessel containing over 500 people, I noticed the deck had a lot of blood on it and assumed they'd been fishing. Until I stepped on a severed finger. The madman in charge of the vessel had been sacrificing people to "bless" the voyage.