Wierd Question
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
Hi All,
It might be a very bad thing to ask and normally in a social circle, we would not ask this type of question - But here since the interaction is over internet and the people involved are mostly on spiritual paths, so I thought of asking below question:
Does anyone of you have been along with a person during that person's last moments? meaning few minutes earlier that person was breathing, but after few minutes that person died in front of you? If you have been along with a dying person during that person's last moments, then can you please tell how was that dying person feeling as per you - means from the facial expression did you make out something as to what that person was experiencing just before that person's death. Or if you were not there, but someone very close to you was there (who you know would not lie to you in telling such a thing) and he told you that experience - then can you please share that experience?
Till now, I have heard about the death of my few relatives over phone, but I have never been around a person, when that person was dying. So a query came to my mind few minutes back that what does a person feel during that person's last moments.
I am sorry if by me asking the above question, it is bringing sad memories in you - this is not my intention to make you sad and if because of my reading this post, you become sad because of your past memories, I ask you to please forgive me and please neglect my this post.
May you and all sentient beings be peaceful and happy.
Comments
Nothing dramatic, it's like they were there, and then they weren't, like something leaving.
I was with my father as he died.
He was in an unconscious, quasi-comatose state; he said nothing, expressed nothing and went silently.
His final 'act' as it were, was to open his eyes.
Upon death, the muscular control keeping the eyelids shut, disappears.
The last sense to disappear, before dying, is the hearing.
So speak wisely, calmly and lovingly in their presence.
I worked for some years as a paramedic in a hospital ER, and so I have been at a dying person's bedside countless times. In the overwhelming majority of cases, unconsciousness precedes death, often by a considerable length of time. In cases where this transition is rapid, it still manifests as a simple loss of consciousness. Most of the time these patients are not lucid, and even when they are, they are too sick to be very expressive.
The few exceptions are memorable. I vividly recall a 10-year-old girl, injured in an auto accident, say "I feel like I'm dying." And I remember an old woman with dementia become suddenly, serenely conscious and tell us that her husband was here to take her away. There was no husband in the room, he'd been dead for years.
But these exceptions were very, very few. Most of the time dying patients are unconscious and death is an impressively simple event.
I was at my mother's bedside when she died. She remained quite lucid until very shortly before the end. Her last words to me were: "I've been cruel to you". I said something like: "Come on, Mum, you're not cruel" to comfort her. She rallied surprisingly and shook her head to emphasize what she had said. I went out into the kitchen a short while later to have a "cuppa" as I hadn't eaten or drunk for some while. Whilst I was in the kitchen I heard a gasp and was called back into the room. She was going and went in probably less than a minute. It seemed as though "the little boy" (I was ~40) had to leave the room so that this intimate act of dying could occur.
Incidentally the pet cat, usually quite placid, dashed from the room as she died, looking quite frightened. Make of that what you will.
I have two stories to share.
The first is from my aunt, who watched my uncle pass away after a struggle with cancer that had lasted some months. He had become first housebound, then stuck in the living room downstairs, then in bed in that living room, and when the end was coming it was evening and my aunt was with him. He stayed conscious until the end. She was literally looking into his eyes as he died, and she said to us later "it was like he just slipped away when the light left his eyes". This happened about nine months ago.
The second event was the death of my stepmother in 2007. She had also had cancer, of the lymph nodes, and had taken about a year to deteriorate. She was taken to hospital and I got a call that she was dying, I was living and working in the UK at the time. So I rushed over by plane, and was in time to see her lying in bed. She wasn't speaking anymore, but I told her that despite our rocky past relationship all was forgiven, I cared for her and she had been like a second mother to me. She squeezed my hand at that. I left the room, and some time later me and m father were standing in the hallway outside the closed door when I felt this gentle but tremendous sensation of peace, like a giant cloud of silence, accompanied by a feeling like the most wondrous perfume, emanate from that room. My father said, "Do you feel that?" And we went inside and she was completely still. We called the nurse and they told us she had passed.
The second event changed my view of reality and my life, once i figured out what it meant. Up until that point I was mostly a materialist agnostic, but this started the spiritual wheel turning.
So, not a sad memory.
I was with my wife when she died a couple of years ago. It was in the emergency room of the hospital, so I'm not sure it was a typical experience, if there is such a thing. Instead of a peaceful death where you can exchange a few last words, you feel like you're sitting in the middle of a busy intersection. Since I used to be an EMT and worked in a military hospital I was no stranger to the noisy, busy ER and knew from what they were telling each other there was no coming back from this episode as her lungs started shutting down.
You feel helpless, but you have an important role. I had to be there for her. Even with the beeps and alarms and wheezing of the breathing machine and the tubes stuffed down her throat and sedation, the nurse told me that my wife visibly relaxed and stopped fighting the restraints when she heard my voice. So I held her hand and talked to her. I don't remember about what, probably her son and daughter on the way and such. Then when it was time to turn off the machines, I went outside and just stood and looked out at a changed world for me. I'd process what happened later, after the business of taking care of my wife was over.
Is that what you're looking for? It's not usually like in the movies or stories.
I was with my mother when she died. My brothers and sisters and I were supposed to meet with the doctor early in the morning and one brother, one sister, and I went into her room while we were waiting for everyone else to meet us. We sat down beside her bed, we hadn't even spoken and about a minute later she stopped breathing. Just like that, one moment she was there, the next moment she was gone.
It was no extra special moment for me. We'd spent most of the previous few days beside her, and we had some special moments then, but even then she wasn't really completely 'with it'. I was mostly just relieved that her suffering was over.
I think the actual experience is quite varied depending on what is going on. I was with my grandmother during the days she became ill, declined, and eventually died. But the essence that made her, her (whatever you want to call that) left at least 24 hours before her body's cell processes completed the dying and her breathing and heart stopped. She had a brain hemorrhage, and she was not conscious most of those 5 days. She did rally as others mentioned, she woke up and was completely lucid, knew who we were and talked and laughed with us. Then she went basically comatose and she died 24 hours later. Her blood pressure went way low, her heart rate went high, he breathing was erratic and shallow and very slow, and then it just stopped. Her stats continued to change in the 12 hours before she died, which we knew would happen as that is how the doctors explained it. She was not in pain and did not grimace or have really any facial expressions. She, too, waited until most of the vigil-keeping family had left the room. But like I said there was a very palpable difference in my grandma as I knew her. She was there, then she was gone. And her body shell was left to continue the cell dying process but she was not there anymore.
It was actually exactly the same when we've been with pets who have died. Sometimes, they are present until the moment their body functions cease, and sometimes whatever made them, them, was gone before their body quit.
I have an unusual experience in the fact my mother died but was resucitated and is still living (thankfully) today.
She'd had a heart attack and I was surprisingly calm during it- directing my father and daughter what to do, performing CPR whilst the ambulance was en route and then ordering my father on how to move furniture for the paramedics to wheel my mother out of the house more easily etc.
My daughter and I followed the ambulance to the hospital and when I was in talking to my mother, her eyes suddenly rolled back and she flat lined. They always lie in movies, the flatline is DEAFENING. The doctor and nurses came from everywhere to resucitate her and I was pushed away. My mother was still holding my hand so pulling my hand away is what broke me down into tears. We'd been talking about my daughter and what I was to cook for dinner when she literally flat lined mid sentence. I watched from outside the cubicle as they worked on my mother. I was crying but fascinated by the defibrilator and the CPR being performed by three nurses. I think it took them 7 minutes to get my mother back and when she came to she looked at all of them and said "What happened?" After I got to see her she told me where she'd been during that time (but that's for another thread).
When I was at home cooking for my father and daughter, I reflected on just how quickly it had happened and how fleeting life really IS. I think I finally understood the Buddha's teaching on impermanence and how our life span is like the dew on grass in the morning. I can tell you also that I have never taken my time with my family for granted since. Which again was hammered home to my with my initial diagnosis for my illness too.
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Hi All,
Thanks for sharing your experience.
I was usually always put away by my parents from attending funerals of those close to us, who had died - even nearly for the last 15 years - and may be it would have been my cowardness or my fear to be along side a dead person in a room (if i go to visit that dead person's family) and i might have feared touching the dead person - I have not touched a dead person till now. In the last year, i went to funeral ground to see the cremation of dead human bodies as per Hindu religion.
If we hear about a person's death over phone, then what prayers can we say for the dead person? Any information please. Thanks in advance.