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Witnessing Death

The only death I actually saw was a mother and child killed by a lorry in St Johns, Antigua. But this was about 200 yards away from me, so I didn't realise what I'd seen until I read a report in a local paper.

The only body I've seen close-up was my father, in his coffin before the funeral. And he looked really dead.
 
He had all sorts of stomach problems and pains relating to obesity, so it may have been aggravated. As his next of kin never got in touch with me, even to notify me about his funeral, I don't have any more details.
 
I feel very uncomfortable talking about seeing people die nowadays .. for a number of reasons including working on a hospital ward, being a patient on a hospital ward, care work in the community etc .. I used to love horror films when I was younger but I just stick to comedy films now and cringe every time the Mrs put's on some new morbid drama.
 
That would lead to peritonitis, which is a nasty enough way to go. It isn't instant though. Something else must have been involved. :confused:

Agree with you on this, as described earlier in this thread, my dad died suddenly and without warning. the cause of his death was recorded as diverticulitis (spelling?) which lead to a rupture in his stomach/bowel, which then lead to peritonitis and toxic shock.
as explained earlier, none of this was common knowledge to any of us (his immediate family) we had never heard of diverticulitis?? only when speaking to a long lost friend of the family (when telling her of the funeral arrangements) did she tell me that SHE suffered from the condition and was suffering terribly from it.
Afterwards when reflecting on what i then knew, he had for a good few years complained occasionally of feeling bloated, but never made a fuss of it. he was a tough old sod all his life so it makes you wonder how much pain he'd actually gone through and just shrugged it off?
ANYWAY PEOPLE.... in all seriousness, if you have any of the above symptoms... please please go and get it checked out, it all happened very fast - Saturday 4pm rushed in hospital with apparent bad diahorea , 5.30am Sunday he was gone.
 
The only death I actually saw was a mother and child killed by a lorry in St Johns, Antigua. But this was about 200 yards away from me, so I didn't realise what I'd seen until I read a report in a local paper.

Horrible thing to witness and unfortunately i can also relate to something similar. walking from work into town one day, i was crossing a large road bridge over a main road/by pass (60mph restrictions) when a group of about 6 teenage boys stupidly decided to cross the road below. one of the lads though was hesitant to cross. to cut a long story short, he ran out in front of a 40ft artic' and was struck head first by the corner of the trailer as the driver tried his hardest to avoid him.
what made it all worse was his mates coming back over the bridge where i was stood (with a guy i knew at the time) and when i told them what had happened they DENIED it was them...
some people have absolutely NO MORALS.
Thankfully the truck driver was found innocent, SADLY the young lad 14yrs old was killed instantly.. another short life wasted.
feeling completely depressed now so looking for something to cheer me up.
 
Sorry about the loss of your Dad ... yep, change of conditions have to be reported rapidly. ..
 
Hey all, my apologies if sharing the experience has brought up sad feelings for any of you. It's definitely not a jolly subject by any stretch, albeit one that touches all of us, and arguably not one that is broadly discussed in our society. Personally, I've found it very helpful to have received the support offered by this community. It kind of feels like the Fortean aspect of death is actually quite removed from the experience of losing a loved one. We all love a good ghost story, but no-one gets haunted by the living.

A couple of posts on this thread are ringing true with me - the needless sensationalism and subsequent morbid fascination of gore etc playing a big part in shaping our society. When death is cheap, do we value life less too?
 
This thread took me back to when my Dad died thirteen years ago at Derriford Hospital. He had been unwell for several weeks and had a big heart attack on the wards during the night so my wife and brother and I rushed there in the morning. His heart had stopped for 15-20 minutes before they brought him back in the night and he was unconscious when we arrived. A few minutes after, he gently and gradually slipped away, so it was very hard to tell the actual moment of death. It was very peaceful which was good because he had always been scared of dying.

There was a strong sense that he had 'held on' until we arrived (which took several hours) and he had chosen to slip away shortly after we came. It did occur to me later that with his brain being starved of oxygen for so long during his heart attack, whatever it was of him that held on for us (if that is what happened) could not have been his physical brain. I really am not sure what to make of that but may he rest in peace.
 
Back to the grim side:
Adrian Mole author Sue Townsend saw girl strangled to death when she was eight
Telegraph Reporters
9 October 2016 • 12:37pm

Sue Townsend, the late author of the Adrian Mole series, witnessed a child being strangled in the woods when she was eight years old, a new documentary reveals.
In 1953, the then Susan Johnstone hid in a tree with of friends in a wood near her Leicester home while she watched helplessly as 12-year-old Janet Warner was murdered by Joseph Reynolds, a labourer from Dublin.
"My memory was that he was dragging her by the throat and he strangled her," Townsend recalls in previously unseen footage to be shown on BBC2 on Saturday.

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...sue-townsend-saw-girl-strangled-when-she-was/
 
:eek: That is so awful.
 
I had to recently sit with an elderly family member who died and this was not the first person I've sat with who was taking their final journey I 've put this in a spoiler as some people get frightened or upset by the prospect of death.

I've noticed that just before the point of actual death, people and animals get quite agitated, this usually only lasts for a couple of seconds. It's like we actually see death and there is a final attempt to avoid it. Luckily it doesn't last long and from experience once that point is reached the final breaths are usually quite peaceful. I'm just wondering if other people have observed this?
 
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I've never actually witnessed death (thanks be to the deities etc, given the fear of my own mortality) but have seen the aftermath on a few occasions, all of which I found unsettling to some degree.

In Heidelberg in the early 80s I was on a German language course – on the way back to my B&B an ambulance passed me very slowly, going the other way. A little while further on was a large amount of blood and an outline of a person drawn on the road – very disturbing, and quite surreal now I think about it.

In 1988 on the railway station in Pune, India, a dead body was placed on the platform directly in front of me while I was waiting for a train - it was covered with a thin straw mat but with the arms out sideways not covered. Odd, but not quite as unsettling.

In the early 80s while pretending to be a 'responsible' adult looking after 16-18-year old students (a staff member dropped out, I stepped in at the last moment to make sure the students' trip to Strasbourg, Brussels and Luxembourg was able to go ahead). While walking over a bridge in Luxembourg I happened to look down and saw what I thought was a body bouncing down a storm drain; I walked down to check what it was – and it was exactly that.

I then had to ask the local youths who were there to call the police, my schoolboy French and German not being up to 'there's a body in a storm drain'. The youngsters did, the police turned up and explained it wasn't that unusual: druggies further upstream take drugs (heroin, I guess) and, er, in their stupor, fall in. There was a fair bit of blood, as bouncing down a storm drain isn't conducive to a peaceful ending. That was the most disturbing of the three - not a pretty sight...

I'm 56, my parents are 84 and hanging on in. And I'm so very dreadfully awaiting the inevitable - my brother knows that he is in charge of everything at that point. Not sure I'll be able to do to much...
 
I'm 56, my parents are 84 and hanging on in. And I'm so very dreadfully awaiting the inevitable - my brother knows that he is in charge of everything at that point. Not sure I'll be able to do to much...

The recent death I witnessed I had to get the family members to come around the bed and hold the hands of the dying relative as I realized that she was about to die. I told them to tell her how much they loved her and they were with her.

It's very sad that we are so removed from death that there are only a few of us who realise and recognise what's about to happen.
 
I have witnessed people pass away {when a student on the wards} not many, but know what you are talking about Naughty. However I have been on a train that was hit by a car.{on a railway crossing}here was an enormous bang andI thought the train was going to derail . you could hear the metal grinding underneath the train. It was pretty awful. 2 people died at the scene. By a coincidence {different thread?}, a year later I was on the same train which was held up at the station, as someone had died on the track{a man had jumped further down the line}. Whilst being held up I got chatting to a man beside me. He told me about how a relative of his had narrowly missed being killed in a train/car crash the year before on the same line. The person was due to be picked up but slept in. The car ended up hitting a train. The train I had been on. I told the man this and the colour drained from his face. We both wondered about the chances of us sitting together were.
 
I’ve seen hundreds die (A&E Nurse) so can say, with all honesty that there is nothing to fear there.

But please folks. Please remember to have a good poo BEFORE you pop off. Someone has to clean up you know.

The one person I do remember very clearly was a lesbian post woman who had taken an OD of a med that meant she would die of a heart attack but there was a deteriorating cardiac arrhythmia leading up to it.

I was standing with a defibrillator, shocking her intermittently, whilst her heart went through it’s terminal dive so began talking to her (she was unconscious obvs.) when she did “go” for the lest time I felt her inside me..not just a passing whim...she WAS me. I smelt her CK1 aftershave stuff, saw her mum in my mind as clear as anything and felt her run her fingers through my hair very clearly. Then. POOF she was gone.

There is no death folks.
 
I'm also ex NHS, I've washed loads of dead people and I've been present at the exact moment of death a few times. My Mum used to ask me how my day had gone but I never wanted to tell her the details if someone had died. I didn't want to bring her or anyone else down, it was just co workers that shared support of each other.
 
Been around several sick people in the family while they were in the process but not there at the exact time.....except for my brother( my only sibling and we were fairly close especially when young and through the college years )
He died from cancer....took a few weeks for the whole process, ( he had recovered once and then the cancer came back several years later) . I was with him the last day and saw him take his last breath. He was under sedation and seemed out of it but it was hard to watch. I and another family member dressed him in regular clothes (he was in bed clothes at the time) for the morticians who came to take him to their funeral home.
I miss him all the time.
 
My mother was an example of someone who waited until she was alone, to die.
I'd been allowed to sleep at the hospital the previous night, in case it happened, but she waited until the following night, when in fact I'd gone back home on the 30 minute bus journey.
Ah well!
I was encouraged to view the body the following day , at the hospital.
It wasn't a pleasant experience. She was laid out in a special little somewhat dark room which smelled like the biology lab at school.
Her face looked very severe - I suspect her lips were superglued together.

My ex husband, on the other hand, had only been gone a couple of hours when my son , daughter, and I all arrived at the hospital from our different locations -all of us too late to say goodbye!

He simply looked like himself, asleep.
I was happy to touch his hand, whereas I hadn't felt like touching my mother. She looked too formally dead.
 
My Father used to have all sorts of people coming and selling him overpriced things so I told him to lock the security door.
When he died we had arrived for our weekly visit and he had snibbed the back door so the key I had wouldn't open and we had to wait till my sister was able to come with a key to the front.
When I saw him he looked younger and like a beautiful marble statue.
When my husband died in hospital our children and I came and I was stroking his hand when he died.
It was like a light flicked out so I knew before the nurse said that he had gone.
 
when she did “go” for the lest time I felt her inside me..not just a passing whim...she WAS me. I smelt her CK1 aftershave stuff, saw her mum in my mind as clear as anything and felt her run her fingers through my hair very clearly. Then. POOF she was gone.

This is an astounding and fascinating statement. Thank you for sharing it.

May I please respectfully ask: do you mean that the fragrance made you think of this experience, or that you directly-experienced these thoughts, or; is it impossible to say which of these circumstances occurred.


There is no death folks

Please.

You will have directly-witnessed much more of the reaper's work than me. I've only been there myself at the exact departure point of death three times (all far too upsetting to discuss for me now, and maybe ever) but have a regular random association with death via my day-job.

Your conclusion that 'there is no death'.

Please tell us more about exactly what you mean by this. Why this conclusion? And in what sense? I am captivated by your calm certainty and understated inarguable tone.

What more can you tell us?
 
Morning Elprincipeseo, sorry for you and your family for the passing of your Nan. I have dreamt of my Mum and Dad and it has gave me some comfort. This year is 30 years since my Dad died and it's a poignant year, as my Mum shares the same birth date as my brother and brother- in- law, who will both be 70. Death is a kick in bollocks but I always remember them.
 
This is an astounding and fascinating statement. Thank you for sharing it.

May I please respectfully ask: do you mean that the fragrance made you think of this experience, or that you directly-experienced these thoughts, or; is it impossible to say which of these circumstances occurred.




Please.

You will have directly-witnessed much more of the reaper's work than me. I've only been there myself at the exact departure point of death three times (all far too upsetting to discuss for me now, and maybe ever) but have a regular random association with death via my day-job.

Your conclusion that 'there is no death'.

Please tell us more about exactly what you mean by this. Why this conclusion? And in what sense? I am captivated by your calm certainty and understated inarguable tone.

What more can you tell us?

Gladly.

I’ve seen death in all its forms, it used to really get to me, especially children, but the thing that really used to hit me was the suddenness of life interrupted. When someone dies suddenly there is often a time afterwards when your going through their effects for ID or property checks. You’ll find photos of their families, little “notes to self” like appointments in diaries that they’ll never keep and such and, inevitably, you personalise it...”God, just imagine if this was me” etc.

But then you start to hear the tales of those you save through Cardipulmonary resuscitation, the sdministration of the Heroin agonist Naloxone to bring some dead folk back.

A fair few of them have told me stuff that happened when they were “dead” that told me that they weren’t dead at all...one guy had a massive cardiac arrest on the golf course and said “Christ that was weird...I’d teed off and hit the ball sweetly down the fairway, I watched it fly and suddenly realised the sky had gone the most wonderful blue, the trees had become so Green, it was totally beautiful. The ball flew on and on and I felt like I was flying with it, but then it stopped in mid air and started flying back the way it came, it got faster and faster and eventually hit me dead centre of the chest...And I woke up here in A&E (ER)”

The chest impact was me defibrillating him...he was as dead as a door nail for a good 1/2 hour having cardiac massage from his mates.
 
My mother was an example of someone who waited until she was alone, to die.
My mother did the same. Ms Petes had arranged for her to be transferred to the care home which she managed, and spent some time at her bedside whilst I got some sleep. On the morning she died it was obvious the end was very near. Ms Petes rang me repeatedly (it transpired later that the phone upstairs had stopped working suddenly), but got me about 10 mins later on the mobile. I set off (the home was only 15 minutes away) only to be blocked by a huge tractor doing 5mph. Got there 5 minutes too late. Ms Petes had stepped out of mums room for literally a minute to speak to someone and in that short period she passed away. Typical - I imagine her having a good laugh at that.
 
A friend was in hospital for about 10 days, me or another friend or his son would visit so
he had a visitor more or less every day, one day when is son was there he just looked up
and said "That's it I have had enough now" closed his eyes and died,
just like that. gone apparently as is eyes closed.
 
I recall, in the summer of 1975, getting a call from my father to come to the nursing home where my grandfather had been admitted. He felt there wasn't much time and, if I wanted to see my grandfather, I'd better hurry. When I arrived, my grandfather was alive but I can still recall his labored breathing. The breaths seemed to get further apart and then they just stopped. I don't remember anything particularly Fortean about that moment - just the look of sorrow in my Dad's eyes.

I always wondered just how long it actually takes for all our biological systems to shut down. I'm thinking, in cases such as this, it's not so much a switch getting flipped but rather a gradual fade to black. I don't know that I find that particularly comforting. That means you may have a period when you know you ran out of gas but you're still coasting to a stop. You like to hope those are a peaceful few moments but who knows?
 
I recall, in the summer of 1975, getting a call from my father to come to the nursing home where my grandfather had been admitted. He felt there wasn't much time and, if I wanted to see my grandfather, I'd better hurry. When I arrived, my grandfather was alive but I can still recall his labored breathing. The breaths seemed to get further apart and then they just stopped. I don't remember anything particularly Fortean about that moment - just the look of sorrow in my Dad's eyes.

I always wondered just how long it actually takes for all our biological systems to shut down. I'm thinking, in cases such as this, it's not so much a switch getting flipped but rather a gradual fade to black. I don't know that I find that particularly comforting. That means you may have a period when you know you ran out of gas but you're still coasting to a stop. You like to hope those are a peaceful few moments but who knows?

Latest medical thinking is that it's looking like a much longer process than previously thought.
 
My mother was an example of someone who waited until she was alone, to die.
My grandma died a month ago at the age of 91. Very much a case of her heart had done its work, and had decided enough was enough, and in fact we'd all had the sense at her birthday back in Feb that it would probably be her last. She was in hospital for a week, and all the family (she had five kids so there are a lot of us!) were able to get to see her and say their goodbyes while she was still conscious and able to interact with them. I stayed until the Friday evening, at which point she was very much morphined up and mostly not conscious, and then I headed off on the two hour drive back home. She died late on the Saturday evening (about 10:30pm), with just my mum (her eldest child) with her. I was very much upset for my mum that she was there on her own when it happened, but it felt to me like grandma had waited until it was just the two of them, just as it would have been back when my mum was born and before any of the rest of us arrived in the world. Also a "handing over the reins" of sorts - my granddad is still alive but so full of dementia and other problems that we don't think he has long left - so my mum is really now the head of the family.

Hey, I might be reading far more into any of that than what actually happened, but it struck me as seeming right that it should have happened that way.
 
When I was 18 I was working in a general hospital with no experience of death. A gentleman was in a side room for privacy. Even with no experience I knew that he didn't have long, and I;m not sure how I knew that.

I went into the room and he was taking his last breaths. Instinctively I held his hand and stroked it. I told him that it was OK and that I was there with him. I have since found out that the sense of hearing is the last thing to go.

It was a priviledge (but not a desired one) to be there for someone taking their last breath.
 
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