Support Tyler's Fight To Preserve His Grandfather's Legacy

Most may know me as the Minecraft creator Nightwing7974

But my name is Tyler and this is the story of the last half a decade of my life and the pain my mom and I have endured through being a caretaker…

For 20 years my mom and I have lived with my grandfather and were there for him since I lost my grandmother in 2007… throughout my life, I grew up without a father and my pop pop was the only person I had to even somewhat resemble a father figure…

In 2020, my grandfather had an accident when he fell down the stairs of our home… when that had happened, the road to recovery was a difficult, time consuming, and painful process filled with heartache and trauma… and towards the end of 2021, he began to show early signs of dementia… and from the day of his incident in 2020, to the day he passed away in July of 2023, my mom and I were by his side and helped him through everything… we were the only ones in our family, who had made the decision to step up, and be full time 24/7 caretakers for him…

In my junior and senior years of high school, I remained home, helping my mom take care of my grandfather while balancing a career, my schooling and graduating, a relationship, and somehow some way managing to find a way to find time for myself all while I watched on as my best friend slowly slipped away more and more…

There are many stories that I have had throughout my time as a caretaker, but this is the one that sticks with me the most…

This story takes place just a couple months before his passing…

I had just finished up dinner and put it in my room with my girlfriend, and did what I had always done… go in and talk to my pop pop… when I had went in, he was struggling to speak that day… He was trying so hard to speak, but I told him “Don’t worry, it’s okay… You don’t have to speak, it’s okay”… So I had sat in there with him and talked to him… my hair at the time was abnormally long, since it had been awhile since he took me to the barber… and he did his signature head shake he’d always do since he wanted me to get a haircut… One thing I always did, because it was a major thing I was struggling with, was asking him if he was proud of me… and I had said this time, “I hope you’re proud of me pop pop, I hope I made you proud…” Again, he tried to speak, but he couldn’t… I didn’t want him to over exert himself… but when I had turned around and told him I was going to eat my dinner and that I’d see him tomorrow, he said in the clearest way possible, just like he always spoke before he got sick, and said “Tyler… I am so proud of you… please do not forget that… I am proud of you…” At that point… I couldn’t take it anymore… I looked at him and said “I love you so very much…” I ran into the bathroom and broke down… I cried the entire night… Throughout his last few years, the dementia tore away at him more and more… but at that very point, he was fully there… he didn’t want me to worry… he knew that I wanted to make sure I made him proud… I just still cannot grasp or comprehend how that entire time, he struggled to speak… but right at the end, he spoke as if nothing was wrong… I do not know exactly where I align religiously, but this experience has definitely given me at least a little faith that a higher power was at play that night…

The day my grandfather passed away, it had happened very suddenly… and this is how it went…

The morning of July 9th, I woke up at around 7:30 AM… my girlfriend had been awake, and she came into the room while I sat on the bed planning my day… she told me, “You might want to shield your heart babe… but I think your grandfather is dying…” And I chose not to believe it at first… I was in denial… my mom was in there crying… but still, I chose not to believe it… it wasn’t until I heard a faint “Tyler… Tyler… Tyler…” come from his room… that was when I had decided to go in… and when I went in, he was laying in bed… his mouth was open… and he was making this strange “gargling”/“wispy” sound that I had never heard before… I apologize if the description is not the best, but I genuinely have never heard a sound quite like that before… I walked up to the right side of his bed and I held his hand… This was when reality started to settle in for me… this is real… he really is dying… but yet, there was still another part of my brain that was denying it… that didn’t want to face reality… The only words I was able to get out in between my rapid breaths and tears were “I love you… It’s okay”… He held my hand with enough grip strength that wasn’t too weak or strong, but I describe it to be “Strong enough to let me know that HE knew I was there…” The cover photo you are seeing, was taken at 8:59 AM… and It wouldn’t have been taken, if my girlfriend wasn’t there to think of it… that was just a mere 20 minutes or so before he took his last breath… I had stepped out of the room briefly to call a family member to let them know what was happening… and when I got off the phone and went to go back in his room, my girlfriend stepped out and stopped me… “Don’t go in… he’s gone…” He had taken his last breath… Just like that… it was over… I lost my best friend… and what I personally choose to believe, is that he didn’t want me to see him go… he didn’t want me to see him at his weakest… so he waited until I was out of the room… but even after his passing, the pain still hasn’t ended…

Just a few short moments after his passing, the family member who I had called arrived… and in what I thought was going to be a somber, comforting moment where we can console each other, became anything but that… This was what I witnessed… my mom was screamed at and had curse words thrown at her… blamed for not telling anyone he was dying and that “You know when someone is going to die!” When the days leading up to his death, there were no major warning signs at all that could have indicated he was going to die that day… And on top of that, the doctors had told us that at the least, he would see his 90th birthday in October… anything after that, would be up in the air… his death came to a shock to us, and yet, we were blamed for not telling anyone… And what makes me truly sick, is that all of this unfolded right in front of my grandfather’s body… Scientists say that the hearing of the recently deceased can persist up to 30 minutes after passing and is the last sense to leave the soul… so the last thing my grandfather heard as he was leaving this earth, was the family turmoil and drama that unfolded right before his body… and to know he heard that as he was transitioning, hurts me so deeply…

The following month, a day after my 20th birthday, we laid him to rest in a brief ceremony for him… at the ceremony, my mother and myself were the only ones that I was able to visibly tell showed any emotion… we were the only ones that I could tell cried and felt genuinely impacted by his loss while others didn’t take it nearly as seriously… grieving is different for everyone… but we as the caretakers, are the most impacted… I was the one who placed his belongings and mementos into his crypt, and my mom put stuff in as well… WE were the only ones who had put anything into his crypt… and immediately after that quick ceremony, everyone came to our house to discuss the house… 2 of the 3 wanted the house sold because they wanted nothing to do with it, whereas my mom and I wanted to remain in the place we have called home for decades… I had tried to speak up… to open my mouth and say I how felt… but I was swiftly brushed off as if me and my voice didn’t matter… as if my relationship with my grandfather meant nothing… I broke down and cowered away… letting my family brush aside me and my voice… they gave my mom ONE year to prepare this house for sale… one year to pack up 20 years of memories and find a new place to live… all while trying to pay bills, work, and attempt to move on with our lives… One of my grandfathers children and grandchildren stayed to take care of him… stayed to keep him going…we very easily, could have sold this house ages ago and put him in a nursing home… but we didn’t… we stayed here, and celebrated Christmases, Thanksgivings, and birthdays with him… we stepped up and did the right thing… because no one else in this family would have taken care of him 24/7 like we did…

In the past year, we have kept up with this house… paying the bills, cleaning what we can, and did all the work… More work on top of what we had to do when taking care of him… just when I thought the pain had ended, and we could finally move on, we might lose the home my grandparents had built over 30 years ago… we have suffered more than anyone… we stepped up and did the right thing… and now, we are about to lose everything… I have been paying the property tax on the house, even bought a $1700 water heater for the home, and now all the money we had put in will mean nothing…

To truly put this into perspective, my grandfather’s last Father’s Day on this earth, a month before he passed away, our phone… didn’t ring ONCE… NOBODY called him on his last Father’s Day… instead, my mom, girlfriend, and brother, bought him a cake and balloons… and celebrated it with him… all without hearing from his 2 other children… there were no weekly phone calls, there were no Christmas cards, nothing… And that, is inexcusable… We did all the work, and now we are expected to leave our home just so people can have some extra money… Unlike the rest of our family, we have nowhere else to go… the sale of this house would force us to use the money to find a new place to live… uprooting my girlfriend’s job, and making mine harder…

This is a situation I never thought we’d be in… and in the end, we never got so much as a “Thank you” or any other kind of support… Nothing… so while the rest of our family will be able to take the money, and move on while sweeping us under the rug, we will forever have to live with the trauma and pain we endured being caretakers…

We just simply want to move on, and the sale of our home will change our lives forever…

I just want to apologize… ya know, for making this damn thing… this was something I was highly against… and It pisses me off even more, because I was told by my family that “I just want things handed to me”… and that it “Wasn’t my home to take”… Well here I am at age 20, about to enter the fight of my life… and if there’s something my friends and my true family have taught me, is that you can’t do everything on your own… Unlike my family, this house means something to me… this house not only is where I spent my whole life, but it’s the house my pop pop and my grandmother built together… their legacy… my pop pop’s legacy… will live on through me… and I promised pop pop I would never give up… that I would fight… and god dammit I am going to fight until I can’t breathe anymore… The caretakers always get screwed over one way or another… but I want to rewrite that narrative… I want to prove that if you do the right thing, if you fight hard enough, you can prevail against any situation…

I am not expecting this to go anywhere… I’m truly not… Any funds received from this campaign will go towards either bills, food, or any potential legal fees we might fight… and maybe if this somehow goes somewhere, potentially save the house my grandfather and family have resided in for the past 3 decades…

I’m sorry for doing this…

Anything helps.

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this:

Fight back… and when your voice gets thrown to the curb and ignored…

Raise it until it can’t be ignored…

I love you all so very much… and I’m not as alone as I thought I was…

Thank You…

-Tyler and His Family