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Comment by throwawaylaptop | Hacker News Reader

I don't think most people worry about the huge amounts of time after they have died. They worry about the 1-120 seconds while they are really dying and aware.

My college gfs dad died after trying to accompany her on a hike, because I was too busy to go and he didn't want her to go alone. So he drove down on the weekend and went with her. He was an overweight man that never moved.

~24 hours after the hike, which he skipped most of and waited mid trail, he started having a heart attack in his home office. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what he was thinking those last minutes or seconds.

And I wish I just went on that hike with her.

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It's not your fault.

Its obviously not my 'fault'. But it's pretty close to a death I could have prevented for a while if I wasnt pretending to be busy probably.

I remember when she said her dad was going to go instead and I thought "uhh, I don't think that's going to work.. I should just go" but I didn't really like her that much at that point and figured it would just be a lame wasted hike, not that the dude would die.

Ya know, ya really waited until the second comment here to add in the "pretending" lol

Ha. That was more a play off the fact that most times "busy" is just relative.

I wasn't THAT busy, maybe I just had things to do that I wanted to get done more than go on a hike.

I feel it's kind of a moot point. GP's intention or train of thought doesn't change the downstream effects. Busy or not, they didn't go, and that's the bool the universe went with.

As others have already stated though it's really not GP's fault and they're not responsible for managing other's decisions. Could they have saved a person? Maybe. Or maybe the late father would have died a week later anyways.

Life is full of moments like that. For example on your way to work that same morning, had you left your house 30 seconds later than you did, someone might have had to wait at an intersection longer than they otherwise would have, causing them to narrowly miss being in an accident further down the road instead of being hit. Butterfly effect and all that. You can’t predict the future.

I don't worry too much about the butterfly effect because it goes both ways. Sure one stoplight here makes a guy die, but another stoplight over there saves a guys life.

But in this case, when it's a clear "either I put off changing my oil and washing my car, or this 250 lb senior citizen with gout tries going on a hike", it's a lot more clear.

Perhap he shouldn't have gone with her. Perhaps your gf shouldn't have let him go with her. Perhaps you face marriage into a family that has hereditary bad judgment!

Changing your oil and washing your car may be the luckiest decision you've made in your life!

I once did not marry a (beautiful) daughter of a family with an overweight heart-diseased patron. Turned out to be one of the best accidents of life for me. Saw her years later and she was almost as big as her Daddy was when he had his second heart bypass! Glad I missed that "iceberg in the night"!

You do have a little fault here, but it’s marginal vs his lifetime choices, and his lack of understanding of his limits. There should be enough room for forgiveness in all of that.

I get it, I got friends and family that have completed suicide and it’s hard to not think about what I could have done differently.

That's how I see it. Ive always felt a lot worse for the daughter too.

I really hate the fat-shaming going on here.

Yeah, he died. Yeah, he was out of shape.

He wanted to keep his daughter safe, and trying to do so cost him his life. He did something heroic.

What have you done at that level of importance?

I have gone to the gym multiple times per week for many many years so that I can remain a physically capable parent to my children, and not inflict upon them my premature disablement or death.

You wouldn’t have prevented it. You would have maybe unknowingly created a condition that would have postponed it. And then you would never have known that you had done so.

In any case, obesity is the result of a lifestyle and going on the hike was a choice that he made and that his daughter accepted when she chose to go on the hike with her father knowing his condition.

Tragic, but there it is. The clock is ticking for us all. Any day now.

The part of this that really makes me think is when you thought "I don't think that's going to work" about him going on the hike. That's really tough. In the past there have been times I didn't speak up about a concern I had, then found out that a warning would have been warranted. This is something I think about a lot since becoming a father. There has never been anything in my life before where 99% safe wasn't enough. When you're a parent, 99% safe is a nightmare. Risky situations happen every day. Like staying close enough to the kid on the sidewalk to grab her if the she sees a ball and wants to run into the street for the first time ever. As a parent you have to get comfortable just being a total square all the time, and speaking up about safety even if everyone in the room rolls their eyes. So yeah. It's not your fault, and this person's choice wasn't your responsibility. But you're right, if you were a square and spoke up about safety maybe it would have saved a life. That is a valuable lesson to hold on to.

I default to statistics a lot more now, even if ballparked and made up in my head.. and it all stemmed from a different gf asking me "how dangerous do you think that was???!!?!" while giggling and high off adrenaline after taking her to around 155 mph on a Yamaha R1.

I thought for a second and said "idk, probably like 1 in 100 we would have died... Maybe even worse than that.. I don't think I could pull that off 100 times"

And that weird realization made something click and I've stopped doing stupid things.

The new me would have thought "hey, if 100 65 year old obese men with gout go hiking, at least one of them isn't making it back". 22 year old me thought "eh, he's just going to be slow".

>There has never been anything in my life before where 99% safe wasn't enough

Have there been about 75 where it was? If so, congrats on beating the odds.

Not your fault your girlfriends dad was so out of shape a hike (potentially) killed him.

He should have hiked more often.

Not his fault that he couldn't predict his daughter deciding to go on a hike alone, which triggered his parental protective mode.

It is his fault that he made choices which resulted in him being unable to perform basic tasks in life that he would reasonably be expected to sometimes do, such as walking outside.

Is it my fault that I've resulted in being unable to perform "basic tasks" such as walking outside? Have I somehow manifested osteoarthritis by my bad choices?

I suppose it could be considered a bad choice that when my knee ligament snapped, I went to a hospital which was horrendously busy (thanks NHS!) and the doctor didn't care to do more than a cursory exam and send me away (bad choice on my part trusting an expert, I suppose!) which then lead to a (slow) avalanche of problems which eventually destroyed almost every part of my knee?

Yeah, probably all my fault, you're right.

> Is it my fault that I've resulted in being unable to perform "basic tasks" such as walking outside? Have I somehow manifested osteoarthritis by my bad choices?

I don't know, maybe. But I wasn't commenting about your knee. I was commenting about the father's congestive heart failure which is usually, and sounds like in this case, caused by sloth. There are plenty of fit people even in wheelchairs.

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