• Again, sometimes bad things are just bad:  Like Wylie E Coyote can tell you, that light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.  Bad things happen to good people.  Bad things happen to bad people.  Really, just bad things happen and there’s no real explanation.
• I finally found a diet that works:  Extreme grief and stress is an appetite reducer, but the infomercial to market the plan would push those insomniacs into dangerous territory.
• There’s no substitute for showering:  I always thought that if you got crunchy enough that the scum would just crack off.  After four weeks of using those giant wet wipes, I can tell you that doesn’t happen.  Your skin just starts to turn to clay.
• Proclamations of when and if you can cry:  Upon saying “I can’t cry anymore,” you will immediately sob for fifteen minutes.  If you try reverse psychology and say “I can indeed cry some more,”  you will immediately sob for fifteen minutes.  Upon saying “I think that’s a fly,”  you will immediately sob for fifteen minutes.  So essentially any sentence that uses the word cry, or a word that sounds like cry will result in sobbing for fifteen minutes.
• Observations of your current mental state:  People telling you that you’re handling things well will beg the question of what it looks like when others are not handling it well.  Do they take hostages?  Climb clock towers?  Wet themselves?  Run naked down the hall?  Because I tell you, I thought about doing all of those but was too exhausted to pull them off.  That has nothing to do with being strong, and a lot to do with being just too pooped to act on the madness in your head.
• Privacy is out the window:  It won’t matter how private you are, or how you loathe to feel like a burden or someones problem, if you hit a wall hard enough you’re going to go splat and the people around you are going to have to help scrape the bricks off.
• You’re not special:  All the horrible things that are happening have happened before.  Listen to others that have been through it and it will sound like an echo.  This has shown me that saying of misery loving company is a big ol’ lie.  Misery is just misery.  Costco size servings of it don’t lessen the burden.
• You will miss yourself:  At some point you will be retitled “The Caregiver.” This is the moment you will pack away whoever you thought you were and become the keeper of paperwork, the tracker of treatments, the first line of defense for your defenseless loved one.  This is all terribly important, and the ultimate thing you can do for another person, but you will miss yourself.
• Frightening yourself:  There’s a variety of ways that will happen.  The most basic way will be when you happen to glance in a mirror and be startled at your grandparent looking back at you.  Then of course there will be the certainty that you’re losing your mind.  People will assure you that this too is a normal response.  Which, I suppose, is to reassure you that you are going insane normally.
• Impossible choices:  Soon all manner of health professionals will ask you, the now normally insane caregiver, to make impossible decisions.  Whichever thing you choose, it will be a bad choice.  It’s all you’re given, the choice of one horrible thing, or another horrible thing.  The only solace is upon hindsight you’ll realize it didn’t matter that much anyway.
• Crazy vibe:  You’ll soon give out a crazy vibe.  This is accomplished with the combination of weeks of giant wet wipe “showers,” lack of sleep, poor diet, and honest insanity.  The response of others will be fascinating.  Some strangers will move to avoid you, but others will do unexpected things like pay for your coffee, and point out that you’re only wearing one shoe.
• People won’t know what to say:  You’ll watch others grapple for something encouraging to say to you.  There isn’t anything.  You’ll feel bad for them, but allow them to scramble for something.  If you express that you understand that is difficult for them, it will just make them feel worse.  Don’t follow up with whatever they say with “We’ll all soon be dead anyway.”  Might make you feel better but they’ll immediately return home and start ordering you inspirational Hummel figurines.
• Ready for it just to be over:  No you’re not.  As bad as it is, as much as you want the suffering to end, you’re not ready for it to be over.  Nothing prepares you for the loss of your best friend and partner, and nothing really should.  It’s terrible, horrible, and unbelievable, and as such, should remain a shock to all decent people.  Not that you will wish for the pain of your partner to continue, but once theirs stops, yours begins.  
• Your plans for when it’s over:  All those thoughts of going home and sleeping for a week are fantasy.  If you’re lucky, you’ll pass out a time or two for a few hours.  But that big sleep you were longing for, well you’re just going to have to wait for that.  
• Talking about it:  There’s no good way to report on what happened.  All attempts will be clumsy, incomplete, and disjointed.  For an example read all of the above.

Daniel, showing me that even in the hospital, he could make it happen