When I was in the ICU, the hospital went down my emergency contacts and failed to get a pickup until they dialed my dad. The people who were my emergency contacts were good at handling the process and simplifying things for my parents once they found out (shortly after my parents) but they felt some degree of guilt for having failed to have acted.

There are decisions to be made in these situations - notify work, transfer health information, ensure payment stuff is in order, notify people. It's much nicer to have someone handle all of these things.

And, in the end, I think people would have liked to have seen me before I died, should that have been my fate. And that takes flying out of wherever into wherever.

This is utterly bizarre. Why are you inventing conditions the parent poster never mentioned? For all you know they were on a different floor of the hospital, unaware they could have been comforting their child had they but known. Why go out of your way to be an ass about someone else's trauma?

>> What did you have to feel guilty about? You could have done something for your son, remotely, that wasn't already being done?

> This is utterly bizarre. Why are you inventing conditions the parent poster never mentioned? For all you know they were on a different floor of the hospital, unaware they could have been comforting their child had they but known. Why go out of your way to be an ass about someone else's trauma?

Some people have tenuous connections to humanity. In this case, a failure to understand anything surrounding a loved one's accident, other than the provision of physical care. I think that's somewhat more common with tech people, due to how some idealize aloof "rationality" to an extreme.