#took the photo in eden’s room because i am living in a cry for help 😭‼️
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b!g kurt type of fit today (as in i wore a neckerchief)
#took the photo in eden’s room because i am living in a cry for help 😭‼️#better!glee#better!glee art#b!g kurt#art#porcelainposting
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Palliative Nursing
One of my patients died today.
I first met Arthur a couple of months ago. I’m a community and palliative nurse primarily, but I was covering a shift on the ward. He’d been transferred over from another hospital. I never really worked out why, since he was only coming in overnight before being discharged home.
When I came in, his wife Anne was trying to comfort him. He had only received his diagnosis recently – prostate cancer, which had spread to his bones and his brain – and he desperately wanted to go home. He was also frustrated to the point of tears at the way his body had betrayed him. He had been strong and independent, and now he was tired and weak. The struggle to find the words he wanted left long gaps in his speech, and so often neither Anne nor I could help.
He wanted to die. He wanted – he could convey that much – to leave the world ‘with dignity’; if it was time for him to go, he wanted to go. And Anne sat there, and tried to soothe and calm him. He wanted euthanasia, and he could not have it, and I was never sure whether she wanted that for him, or if she wanted to hold onto him as long as she could.
The next time I saw him, he was home again. They’d been in the process of selling their house and downsizing, but Anne cancelled it. So Arthur came home to a warm, sunlit room with an en suite, and they moved their bed down into it. He was a different man when I saw him at home. The words that had deserted him in hospital came more easily, and he smiled, and he could enjoy food again. By about my third or fourth visit – I was seeing him twice a week at that stage, just making sure he had everything he needed to be comfortable at home – he was telling Anne it was a pity all their sons were married and he couldn’t have me in the family.
He had time and support. His daughter Eden moved in for a while; his son and grandchildren live next door. The weather turned warmer, and he sat out in the garden. The family gathered around him, and they took a photo. He was, for the most part, free of pain. You don’t expect that once it gets into the bones, but I am grateful for it.
There is a distance, and there has to be. You aren’t there for every step of the journey, and you come into it as a stranger. Anne woke every time he did, and walked him to the toilet. She coaxed him to eat, helped him use the walker, rubbed ointment into his swelling legs and reminded him to elevate them. She nursed him, and so did Eden. I… stepped in for the other parts. The paperwork. The questions you never think about until someone you love is dying. How do you, and what if, and when, and what do we do about -?
There were changes, last week. Words began to slip away again, and sitting up grew harder. I asked Anne if they wanted a bedside commode for him, so she didn’t have to walk him all the way to the toilet three times a night. She said no, that the exercise was good for him, and they were managing. Then she rang the next day, told me he’d slipped while trying to sit on the toilet, and maybe they’d better have one after all. So my boss Sam and I got one out to their house on Friday. Eden followed me out to the car. She didn’t want to ask in front of Anne, but what needed to happen if, or when, Arthur died? Who did they call, what did they do about his body?
It was a long weekend, and we had the Monday off. Anne rang Tuesday morning. Arthur had significantly deteriorated over the weekend, she told us. She and Eden couldn’t get him up, and they’d been nursing him in bed. His painkillers didn’t seem to be helping as much, because he was restless, turning in bed and plucking at his clothes. My boss covered two of my patients so I could go see Arthur as soon as possible.
Anne was curled up beside him in their bed. Other family members were gathered around, and one of them left the bedside so I could go talk to him. “Here’s Katherine,” Anne said, and Arthur opened his eyes and reached out his hand. He tried to say something as I took and held it. I know he recognised me, even if I couldn’t understand what he wanted to say.
Later I came back with a syringe driver. We use these a lot in palliative care: little machines that very slowly administer a dose into the subcutaneous tissue over 24 hours. Usually, like this one, they’re loaded with morphine, for the pain; midazolam, for agitation and the restlessness that comes over the body in dying; and metoclopramide, for the nausea the morphine can cause. They’re smaller, simpler, and less invasive than an IV line, or repeatedly sticking someone with needles. Arthur didn’t even flinch as I put the first line in, or the second one. The second one is for top-up doses; I used it immediately to give him a loading dose, then taught Eden and her brother how to access it if they needed to give him more pain relief. I left an envelope with the verification of death form at the house.
I left the house not long before seven pm. According to the roster, I’d been supposed to finish at 4:30. That was all right.
The syringe driver runs over 24 hours, but I stopped in to see Arthur and his family around 11am. Arthur was lying on his side. Eden had needed to give him some extra, and so had Anne, but on the whole he’d had a good night, they told me. He didn’t respond this time, although he called out hoarsely a few times. I gave him another top-up, and told Anne I’d be back to change the syringe driver once I’d spoken to the doctor.
I discussed how much top-up Arthur had needed with the doctor, and then one of the other nurses made up the new syringe with me, and my boss covered a patient appointment I had, and I went out to Arthur around 2pm.
Eden was in the front room, continuing to work from home; Anne was on the lounge with a laptop. Arthur had been so peaceful and quiet, she thought she’d get the laundry and a few other things done. Anne and I went in, and she told him I was here to change the medicine, and she’d help him roll over so I could reach. She reached out and touched him, and then she turned to look at me.
“He isn’t-” and she backed away.
I checked the carotid artery.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Anne. “He’s gone.”
And then I held her as she wept.
She was so devastated. She hadn’t been there for him as he died. He’d been alone and she’d been sitting outside, and she hadn’t known.
And it doesn’t matter how many hours she lay beside him, how poorly she slept, half-listening and ready to help the moment he stirred, night after night, the literal around-the-clock nursing she gave him, the long years they lived together. It doesn’t matter how hard, physically and emotionally, it is to support someone you love dying at home, how much she and Eden had gladly sacrificed to give him what he wanted. It doesn’t matter how many people do die alone, waiting for the moment everyone’s back is turned to slip away in privacy. None of that softens the pain, not in a moment like that.
I pray they will eventually.
I got Eden for her, slipped out to the car to get what I needed, and to give them time to themselves.
They had him cuddled between the two of them when I came back, and eventually they chose to leave the room so I could do the necessary things.
I rolled him onto his back, heard the faint groans. Wiped his mouth and crusted eyelids. Removed the lines I’d put in yesterday, straightened his shirt. I was talking to him, every step. It’s just something you find yourself doing. “Sorry, Arthur. I’ve just got to roll you over and get these lines out. I’m sorry if this hurts...”
It’s… not an easy thing, verifying a death. I had thought he was dead the moment I came into the room, and I’d checked for a pulse. Even so, part of you almost refuses to be sure. His hands were so cold, but his throat was still warm. I couldn’t feel a pulse, but maybe that just meant I was doing it wrong (I knew I wasn’t, but what if? What if I had hurt these people so much, and I was wrong, and I had to go tell them he was still alive, and however would they cope with that?) I put a stethoscope to his unmoving chest and listened for a heartbeat, or for breath. I couldn’t hear anything, but I was breathing very loudly myself in my mask – would I hear it? Wasn’t his chest moving, just the tiniest bit? I had to rub his sternum very hard to see if there was any movement away from the stimulus, and I apologised.
Then I lifted his eyelids. ‘Fixed and dilated pupils’ is what the form says, clinical terminology that is accurate as far as it goes. What it means is that you look into those eyes, and they are still and glassy, and the soul behind them is gone.
I could doubt the rest of the tests. Not that one.
I went out, told them I was finished. We talked; I told them what an amazing job they’d done, how proud they should be, all the things that don’t mean anything to them right at the moment, but might later. I stepped into another room to ring the doctor and let her know. I filled out the verification of death form and hid it away in a plain white envelope. Eden rang her brother, and again we went over the final things to be done. Here’s the form. Ring the funeral directors when you’re ready for them to come pick Arthur up. There’s no rush. Call anyone else you think will want to come say goodbye. Give yourselves as much time as you need.
Eden’s brother arrived. She’d sent him a text to come over, but hadn’t wanted to say why. So he came striding in with a cheery ‘hello’, and Eden said ‘He’s gone’, and she choked, and he crumpled. He went softly into the room where Anne was lying beside Arthur, stroking his face and murmuring to him. Too softly; he touched Anne’s arm and she jumped.
Clearly despite herself, Eden laughed.
“I thought for a moment,” Anne said, “that he’d fooled us all. That he was just pretending.”
Which hurt, and still hurts, and I shall remember.
When I left them, it was with the three of them clustered around the bed, the son trying not to cry. They didn’t need me, but I’d drop by in a couple of days if they wanted, I said quietly.
Anne would like that, she told me, and she thanked me for all I’d done. That Arthur had always been glad to see me. “He had his favourite nurse,” she added. “Beautiful Katherine, he said.”
I don’t understand the depth of grace that lets you say something like that in the midst of such terrible grief, but I shall remember that, too.
The last time I made a post a bit like this, I had a little bit of a moral to share. I don’t, this time. I am writing because it helps me process, and I shared it because…well, I still think we need to talk about dying, I suppose, and this is a way to add to the conversation. Because it is such an honour and extraordinary privilege to be a palliative nurse. Because some of you might, like my patients and their families, have questions you don’t know how to ask. Because it touched me, and it might do the same for you. Because love and grief and service to each other are such essential parts of our humanity.
Eternal rest grant unto him, o Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen.
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“Did Dan get TOO TAN?”
(Sept 19th 2017 Dan liveshow timestamps)
0:03 After an awkward pause and salute: “Hello cyber friends” (instant regret and reflection)
0:29 (Dear god, don’t grab your laptop by the screen like that Dan.)
0:44 Grimace #1
1:06 No Dan, you do not look *atol* different. That tweet, title and pic are all just clickbait.
1:10 (Bronze my ass.)
1:19 Hitting us with that meme.
1:25 (Didn’t need to be in your face thanks. Teasing angles?)
1:36 “Never say Trumpy ever again, in any circumstance.”
1:45 Lovely pores and freckles.
2:00 Obviously everyone subscribes to YouTubers for their freckle content.
2:30 Livestreams are “a mistake” because of the chat clinging on to one thing and spamming it.
2:40 No probing or questioning at airport, big grin.
3:01 “The broadband is terrible but the 4G is great.” Okay…
3:17 “The toasty Dan experience”, orangish filter.
3:26 Double rhyme: “I guess that’s a rhyme, yeah that’s fine” (okay it’s a slant rhyme)
3:47 “Buttered crumpet Daniel.”
4:02 “Went to an island in the Mediterranean.” (This is exactly the answer I expected and quite frankly the only one he should give.)
4:09 “Literally did nothing for about six days, it was great.”
4:15 ‘I am Pilgrim’ book recommended by his mum.
4:30 Tricked into reading 900 page book.
5:00 Holiday was incredibly relaxing.
5:10 “Ordeal” getting there, delayed flight, three hours “traumatizing”
5:22 “Haha long boye” “literally, shins driving into my chest, bleeding” alright hyperbolic humor Dan. “Tough.”
5:38 “Violated” on flight by guy’s elbows, “no respect for personal space”, “fully leaning into me”, “didn’t even care”, “honestly an icon for all of us.” (Was it Phil?)
6:03 3 am, old driver, mini bus, cliff roads, did pre-ritual preparing for death.
7:00 “So much yogurt”, doesn’t know why.
7:05 “Assaggetti” tweet, we can shame him, “has the worst sense of humor in the world”, check it out and unsubscribe, doesn’t remember the language (Italian), apologizes, “constantly problematic”.
7:55 “Got that D from the S up above” (vitamin D, or Phil…)
8:16 Phil came on the holiday in case anyone didn’t know.
8:18 “He went from like glass to pale ivory, which is good”, “Phil is someome who erupts in freckles whenever he goes outside, so it’s hard to tell if he tans or if your eyes are just kinda like drawing the dots between the space all the freckles are, if you know what I’m saying.” (Wow, I… I’d like to think you mean what I know, but I’m not sure. Wow.)
8:37 Someone in the chat: “Nice Ursa Major on that cheek boy”. Turn, pose, laugh.
8:41 “The Bigger Dipper of my self esteem.”
8:53 Good day: watched Bake Off and answered emails, “thrilling”.
9:13 Tumblr likes, fan art, “beautiful to celebrate the great people.”
9:43 “The internet is not here”, laughs, sighs, apologizes.
9:55 Some peer pressure advice.
10:25 Had to check what his video title is.
10:35 I don’t know why he bothers to ask if we watched either.
10:55 Accept that he does things by his British calendar.
11:11 Why he didn’t he talk about uni stories when it was happening. Ashamed? Yeah, processing turmoil at the time.
11:55 Now shares traumatizing, terrifying, shameful, embarrassing stories straight away.
12:15 Rowing club guy AU… (not what I was thinking)
12:46 Laundry story: Phil was nice, Dan didn’t ask, *literally* ordered a cab, turned up with suitcase, Phil assumed he dropped out and was moving in, “I’ve had a day and I’m going to wash my socks in your washing machine.”
13:13 “If you struggle to function as a person-” (I really wish he had finished this sentence)
13:15 Asda sponsor for crying in the cheese aisle?
13:23 Pasta burn shaming (were you just never in the kitchen with your mum Dan?)
13:36 Dropping laptop so much recently.
14:00 Never taught cooking, laundry, accounting.
14:18 “No one told me shit!” (in Dan’s face again).
14:33 “What happens when I’m 23?! How do I do a tax?!”
14:54 It was ravioli (pretty sure the instructions mentioned water Dan…)
15:15 Thick as in stupid, not thicc fat booty.
15:30 “Look Fatima, we all have different life experiences, okay?” (lol)
15:36 “Ravioli ravioli, give me the death I deserveioli.” Relates.
15:45 Rihanna livestream, forehead fetishist? Wouldn’t mind if anyone leaves for that.
16:08 Not up on BTS, DNA.
16:33 Shames Eden for “let me see that pastussy” comment, “leave.”
16:45 “Love on the Brain”. He really loves Rihanna, amazing, blessing, doesn’t give a shit, casual, informal, etc. “Bitch Better Have My Money.”
17:25 Is sure BTS video with be “pure and beautiful”, expects “softly applied eyeshadow and very fluffy hair”, he’s sure he’ll enjoy.
17:38 Maybe new gaming video/livestream tomorrow.
17:45 Overcooked, ironic kitchen fire, foreshadowing.
18:08 Wasn’t sure if he should get into Chinese guy story again, but he has to.
18:13 Deep breath: “It was 4 am, I’d been you know, well hydrated that evening, but I decided I needed another drink” go into the kitchen, everyone else was asleep, guy had a whole chicken, with neck and feet, fine but surprising, tiniest pair of white y-fronts, hacked head off and made eye contact, just couldn’t, usually would awaken some kink in him…
19:39 Pool pic, shout out to friend, no consent, relaxing, absorbing sun like a lizard, *basking*, fell asleep, lucky it was a pool and he didn’t drift out to sea, sun stroke vid reference, “the bad tan”.
21:08 People saying “trying to be cute”, the double chins (really?!)
21:21 The least Dan-like photo.
21:33 Thought it would ruin his Instagram aesthetic.
22:10 Lack of other content: relaxing, reading,
22:24 Took a couple other photos, sunset selfie, “no one’s going to take a photo of me” (what the hell happened to your personal photographer?) but then people came (please post, please!)
23:40 Bake off is his life, “Noel Feilding is a national treasure”, caramel was torture while hungry, faves are Liam and not!Val (what did he whisper about Liam? Really wanted him to be…?)
24:30 *Maybe* Halloween Baking, they don’t think that far ahead about anything.
24:48 Phil’s role in Dan’s video, mugging scene took nine takes, afraid to punch him. Outtakes please!
26:03 (grimace #2) “Hello Grandma, my name is Daniel, I’m a wholesome person, that’s a very great influence”
26:16 Wachowski films
26:23 Dan floating in donut plushies would be very challenging.
26:33 Dan flips a bit at the idea that’s it’s weird to like people who don’t know who you are. Uses Ed Sheeran as example.
26:55 Scrolls past person who said they feel better when they have a dream about Dan and Phil.
27:17 Cared more about YouTube than university socializing and class, Pom Bear Massacre reference, made Tumblr account.
29:09 Chapped lips, season changed the moment he stepped off the plane.
29:42 “Okay Universe, I know I can be a bit of a downer, sometimes.”
29:51 Haley Barry Storm powers
30:08 Yes the furry blanket comes out, polyester, sad pimp, Marks & Spencer.
31:06 Ready for everything seasonal, autumnal Yankee Candle range, not haute, but fun themes.
31:31 Frisbee laptop across the room on to the bed, missed.
31:46 Candle haul, yes it is content we need right now!
32:26 Furry invasion on Splatoon, scaley, yiffing proposition, “this is a family game”, not shaming just concerned for kids, though it is hentai-esque…
33:27 Sonic: 2010 reminiscing, formatting of boxes.
34:04 Was stupid side kick, Phil being good, Dan trying to be helpful, actual just a cheerleader, Phil was disgusting, doesn’t know if Phil even knew what he was saying (of course he did).
34:38 Didn’t know uni vid was trending
34:52 Reflection (I think that’s the piano nook)
35:00 Weird because of swearing, someone at YT didn’t watch the vid, “Ah, keep doing that, don’t watch my videos, just know that I’m a good person…”
35:25 “I make great friendly content.” (grimace #3)
35:30 Explains why trending isn’t automatic. Yes, think of the children.
36:05 “But hey, I’m not bad, everything’s fine”.
36:45 “People of all genders do and don’t wear makeup”.
37:10 (I’m pretty sure that the no candles with birds is because of the fumes.)
37:25 What is with the nose touching when confirming Spooky Week? “Next video (nose touch) soon, don’t worry”…?
38:28 “Fans of everything are annoying, that’s just what happens when people are enthusiastic about stuff.”
39:19 Dan doesn’t get annoyed by different fandoms. Says more about the people being annoyed, part of their own insecurity, their lack of community, togetherness, celebration, shared experiences, jealous or sad, or maybe everyone just everyone’s annoying.
39:56 Dream Daddy: so dangerous saying Dilddy. Dan likes Damien, great taste, immaculate presentation, probably not Dilddy’s romantic soulmate.
40:31 Dan is in like ten fandoms (makes a face).
40:45 Chat: “Will Phil become a furry, what’s your fursona?” Dan: “Is it time to go?”
40:55 Has never thought about it, promises he’ll get on it soon, he knows what the internet wants from him.
41:31 Chat full of fursona suggestions. He’s going to start crying.
41:52 “A llama fucking hell.” “Look at the time.”
42:01 Going to go into a (not disturbing) hole later looking into axoltl fur suits.
42:24 Elf on a shelf meme, was going to post a Dan one, “old meme!” (Still don’t need to be up in your face Daniel.)
43:27 Really wants to go see IT, needs to see Mother.
44:04 Shut up! American Horror Story, makes him happy. Loves Sarah Paulson (is his life), feels represented by a lesbian with anxiety. Evan Peters is great, looks gross, or great depending.
45:25 His fursona should be a big bear, I agree. What a reaction.
45:46 Left comb on holiday, looks like a bush.
46:13 (grimace #4 at group chat names.)
46:20 “What is wrong with all of you?”
46:22 Glosses over diet ask. Indeed.
46:26 “Don’t call me Uncle Dan when we’re talking about fursonas.”
46:36 “If you live in Australia vote for marriage equality, we don’t need to have this conversation.” “Come on, come on Australia, sort your shit out.”
47:03 Going to “innocently Google things that are fine”.
47:22 “Me and Phil would love to come to Russia”.
47:27 Limitations of TATINOF.
47:44 Watch uni vid: “Don’t take it too seriously. Remember that most of the time I’m just trying to be funny, and if you ever want like my real feelings or opinions, just think about whatever the opposite of what I’m saying is, and that’s usually how to get to the sincere heart of whatever Dan’s talking about.”
48:13 “Stay calm, ask some senpais for some life advice and think carefully about what your fursona should be.”
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OMG I am so excited Kabby is baaack! Loved the bandage check moment in the premiere! Wondering if you think they'll address Abby's wedding ring on her finger/neck. You think they'd ever have her remove either at some point? If so, when do you see that happening , like at what point and context?
I’m pretty sure Paige just confirmed on Twitter that we’re gonna see it NEXT WEEK and I’m super hyped about it because my hope is that it means we get a real conversation or moment that’s about Jake. I have a lot of thoughts or headcanons about what I might want to have happen with the rings (my fave would be either for her and Clarke and Kane to have a little ceremony and bury them at the Eden Tree so Jake and Vera are together and that’s their place they go to remember them, or that fic I love but forget the name/author of SOMEONE HELP ME OUT HERE where Raven welds them into an infinity symbol necklace for Clarke to wear). @brittanias is voting for Abby giving the rings to Kane for safekeeping before she leaves for whatever her mysterious mission is on that boat in 404, and I also know there’s a strong contingent rooting for her putting her ring on the chain with Jake’s ring and keeping them both around her neck, which I would also love. I think it’s likely that they will come off at some point in advance of the scene where they’re in bed together, because I feel like that emotional throughline makes a lot of sense; like if we see her making the decision to go to Kane’s room, like she’s consciously making the choice to take that next step, and removing the rings is part of that process of moving on.
My mother died nine years ago, and my father remarried about a year and a half after that. I have my parents’ wedding rings. They live in a little tray on the top of my dresser with my jewelry, where I can look at them every day. My mother had ALS, which causes your muscles to begin to atrophy, and after awhile her rings were too big to stay on her hand. They got them resized, slicing a little piece out of the back of both her engagement and wedding rings so you can like bend and stretch them to fit, like you do with cheap plastic jewelry from the dollar store. That worked for awhile, but eventually she just took them both off and put them on her dresser, where she could see them every day. It didn’t make her and my father any less married. They were together for thirty years. In the last years of her life he had to bathe her and dress her and take her to the bathroom and feed her through a feeding tube. The rings weren’t the factor that determined how married they were. They were a symbol, but they weren’t the whole.
My dad took his wedding ring off after my mom died. I don’t know when. We didn’t have a conversation about it. But at some point when his relationship with my stepmom was becoming serious, his wedding ring appeared in the little tray next to my mom’s on the little dresser where we still kept her jewelry because nobody was ready to get rid of her things yet - except for my brother, who was still living in the family house and moved into my parents’ bedroom when my dad moved in with my stepmother. He had to share a closet with his dead mother’s clothes every morning and it was starting to make him crazy. We had an estate sale a year or so after she died, and cleared out the dressers and the closets. I took the jewelry back to my house, my parents’ rings with it. I told my brother if he wants the rings someday, if he ever asks the feminist archaeology major from New Mexico to marry him, he should take Mom’s if he wants it. And if not him, they can go to someone else, or they can stay in their little dish on my dresser. Either way, our mom is still our mom.
We were in family therapy for a little while after my mom died. The four of us siblings felt like my dad had started dating again too quickly, and my stepmom was someone we had known before, whose kids had grown up with my youngest brother. We knew her from soccer and basketball games, and sometimes she and my mom and my sister and I would go out to this little wine bar near our house together and talk about politics or books or her divorce. We liked her as a human being, but not as our dad’s girlfriend, because our dad wasn’t supposed to HAVE a girlfriend, and our mother had only been dead for six months and she had been the center of our lives, and we had gone collectively a little insane from mother grief, so all we did was cope badly (drinking for my sister, food for me, putting headphones on and shutting the world out playing video games for one brother, hostility for the other one). My sister and I both got therapists, but none of the boys would. We finally talked them into group family therapy, which was such a disaster that we quit after four sessions. I blocked out a lot of that time, because it was so traumatic to go from being a family who had always been this unbreakably strong unit to being these people who got angry and said unforgivable things to each other. So I only have one really clear, vivid memory from those therapy sessions. I remember sitting on this couch next to my youngest brother, my other two siblings across from me and my dad in a chair next to the therapist. I was crying so hard I couldn’t see anything clearly. The therapist asked me point-blank if my father being in a relationship made me feel like he had forgotten my mother or didn’t love her anymore. I wanted to lie, but I told the truth. I said yes. It did. That was how it felt. The therapist asked my father, “How does that make you feel?” And I was grateful, then, that I was crying too hard to see anything, because his voice was one of the most terrible things I have ever experienced. So quiet and so broken and so sad. “It makes me feel awful,” he said. “We were married for thirty years. She was the love of my life.”
I know this isn’t an answer to the question that you actually asked me, Anon, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because when the fandom talks about Abby and Jake and their wedding rings and what they mean, on some level it always feels personal to me.�� When someone says that it would mean Abby was forgetting Jake if she ever took the ring off her hand, I think about sitting in the living room with my siblings and my stepmom and my stepbrothers while my dad told us college stories about my mom, and how my stepmother enjoys them just as much as we do, because she knew my mom and what she meant to all of us, and how the fact that my dad wears a different ring now doesn’t mean my mom isn’t with us every day. When I hear people say that the headcanons about Abby passing both rings onto Clarke as a memento are a betrayal of Jake’s memory and it’s wrong for Clarke to have them, I think about my parents’ rings sitting on my dresser.
This has gone quite a bit sideways from your original question, which is something that I tend to do from time to time, but this is a question that has popped up in the fandom before and stirred up a lot of emotions, and erupted over the past few days since we got those promo photos where Abby isn’t wearing the ring anymore, and I’ve been thinking a lot of thoughts about it that I’ve been trying to articulate.
I think everyone has the right to their own opinions, their own headcanons, their own feelings about what they’d LIKE to see happen with the rings, but the fact of the matter is that both options - Abby continues to wear the rings forever, maybe adding a second one on her hand next to the first; or, alternately, Abby removes the rings when she is ready to move on - are deeply personal things that real people do, which are intimately connected with the specifics of that individual person’s grieving. There isn’t a right or a wrong. There isn’t a “you’re disrespecting the person you lost by grieving them incorrectly.” The only right thing is whatever Abby decides.
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