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Witnessing Death

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?

I was with both my parents when they died and I never noticed anything like that on either occasion fortunately. Both were tremendously peaceful passings luckily enough. I did notice in the hours before, however, the occasional staring away into the distance as if they were looking at something - which was slightly unnerving.

As others have said I do feel very privileged to have been with them during their last moments, though it's not exactly an easy thing to go through, of course.
 
^ I would have liked to be there for my parents but sadly my dad had a stroke on vacation in Florida and died in 4 hrs...and my mom died in her sleep at the nursing care facility she was in. I had seen her just 8 hrs earlier. I spent a lot of time with my mom while she was being taken care of but sadly my dad had been on vacation seeing my brother for several months....and I regret not being with him.
 
As a mental health nurse, the areas I have worked in{apart from the wards during training}deaths are usually not that common but often more tragic. To work with young people {and I include people all ages really} who are so convinced that dying is the only answer is truly heart breaking.To work with some one on a constant basis, thinking you are getting some where only for them to take their own lives, is devastating to all involved. I really hope there is no such thing as death and they find true peace. Sorry didn't mean to get too morbid!
 
^ I agree....in that I hope there is something beyond death. I have been agnostic most of my life but as I age I think that it would be great if we could see loved ones again. My father in law and brother in law both died not that long ago...and I'm running out of good family friends.
 
When my Dad died (at home) I was with him. In the Days before he had started to see friends and relatives already passed in the corner of his eye and was fully aware that this signified he was on the way out.

Dad was a scientist and vehement agnostic, he had no belief in survival beyond death but was calmly telling me that his Mum, Uncle George and Aunt Sue were standing in the room or outside the door.

He was totally rational and he and I would chat about the evidence he was seeing for himself. I’m so pleased that he was able to share this information with me in such a dispassionate way and would try and rationalise it even as the exit door was opening for him.

I know I’ll be seeing him again.
 
I was given the chance to view my dad's body in his coffin before the funeral. My brother said it would help me grieve.

I refused. On the grounds that he'd been getting iller and iller and I wanted to remember him as he was when he was younger, full of energy and more vigorous, rather than as an empty shell.

And I still don't know if it was the right thing to have done.
 
I was given the chance to view my dad's body in his coffin before the funeral. My brother said it would help me grieve.

I refused. On the grounds that he'd been getting iller and iller and I wanted to remember him as he was when he was younger, full of energy and more vigorous, rather than as an empty shell.

And I still don't know if it was the right thing to have done.
I think it was for the reasons you've just detailed above .. and he think he would have agreed with you X
 
I was given the chance to view my dad's body in his coffin before the funeral. My brother said it would help me grieve.

I refused. On the grounds that he'd been getting iller and iller and I wanted to remember him as he was when he was younger, full of energy and more vigorous, rather than as an empty shell.

I went to see my mum's body laid out at the funeral home. But she wasn't there. Her former container, a hollow eyed waxwork was in her place. Just a box inside a box. But SHE wasn't there. I didn't find it too upsetting to look at. But when I did need to turn away I found myself unexpectedly facing the coffin lid standing vertically against the wall, her name and dates etched into the brass plate. That hit me like Scrooge seeing his own name on a tombstone.
 
I was with my dad in hospital when he died. He had cancer from smoking, but it had never been diagnosed so it was all quite sudden.
The only thing I can think of as he passed was that the pain he'd been through with it just stopped as well. Not much comfort at the time but we didn't know how long he'd been putting up with it.
 
I was given the chance to view my dad's body in his coffin before the funeral. My brother said it would help me grieve.

I refused. On the grounds that he'd been getting iller and iller and I wanted to remember him as he was when he was younger, full of energy and more vigorous, rather than as an empty shell.

And I still don't know if it was the right thing to have done.

I also think it you did the right thing. I went to see my father in his coffin and got no comfort from it. I would have preferred to have remembered as he was. It's all personal choice of course.
 
I’m not sure why seeing someone you loved ,as a corpse, is supposed to make you feel better.

Unless you’re a very suspicious person who might otherwise imagine that they, really,made a full recovery and went to live in secret in Montevideo and your family are keeping it a secret from YOU.
 
my mum had her family around her and died very peacefully in an excellent hospice. I will be glad for the rest of my life that I was there to see her leave this world. We sat and talked to her and promised we'd look after dad and she didn't need to worry about anything anymore. If there is such a thing as a 'good' death, that's what she had. Peaceful, surrounded by people who loved her, her pain well controlled. In the few days following I did feel that she hadn't quite 'left' and had a dream that she was walking on the south Wales beach she loved, looking fit and healthy, holding her face up to the sun. The feeling of peace and contentment was overwhelming. Having a little cry now, in a sad/happy sort of way...she's been gone eight years now but sometimes it feels like yesterday.
 
I’m not sure why seeing someone you loved ,as a corpse, is supposed to make you feel better.

Unless you’re a very suspicious person who might otherwise imagine that they, really,made a full recovery and went to live in secret in Montevideo and your family are keeping it a secret from YOU.
I'm not sure either. About 200 people dutifully went to see my wife's open coffin,(and I know she would have absolutely hated it, being a very private person) and there were raised eyebrows when I said I wouldn't. I'd already had to "identify" her in the hospital morgue. A sight I'll never forget as long as I live.
 
I was given the chance to view my dad's body in his coffin before the funeral. My brother said it would help me grieve.

I refused. On the grounds that he'd been getting iller and iller and I wanted to remember him as he was when he was younger, full of energy and more vigorous, rather than as an empty shell.

And I still don't know if it was the right thing to have done.
It was definitely the right thing for you to do.
 
I have never seen a dead body (except on TV) and I have never seen someone die IRL. I wasn't allowed to go to my own Grandfather's funeral as I was "too young" and "would find it upsetting". I'm still pissed off about it. I wasn't in the country when my Grandmother died and was buried so that one passed me by too.

I've only been to one funeral (my wife's Grandmother). I'm terrified that I'll lose my shit when I eventually have to see my own Mother/Father lying there. I don't see them very often nowadays and so I'm shocked every time I do by how old they look. I still have pictures in my head of how they looked when they were mid-forties and that's how I want them to stay.

I have a morbid curiosity however, not so much about the moment of death but of the seconds before it when the realisation comes. For example, I am haunted by the youtube clip of a man trying to climb down the front of the WTC. He slips and falls and is carried away by the wind as slowly and as inevitably as a dropped feather. I am tortured by the thought of the fear entering his mind when his foot slips and he realises that he can't hold on and is now going to fall.

I saw another video years ago of an elderly tight-rope walker who slips and falls high over a city street. The same there. His hand almost grabs the rope but he slips and falls. If it's true that everything goes in slow-motion during an accident then a fall from a great height would give you plenty of time to know what's coming.
 
I have never seen a dead body (except on TV) and I have never seen someone die IRL. I wasn't allowed to go to my own Grandfather's funeral as I was "too young" and "would find it upsetting". I'm still pissed off about it. I wasn't in the country when my Grandmother died and was buried so that one passed me by too.

I've only been to one funeral (my wife's Grandmother). I'm terrified that I'll lose my shit when I eventually have to see my own Mother/Father lying there. I don't see them very often nowadays and so I'm shocked every time I do by how old they look. I still have pictures in my head of how they looked when they were mid-forties and that's how I want them to stay.

I have a morbid curiosity however, not so much about the moment of death but of the seconds before it when the realisation comes. For example, I am haunted by the youtube clip of a man trying to climb down the front of the WTC. He slips and falls and is carried away by the wind as slowly and as inevitably as a dropped feather. I am tortured by the thought of the fear entering his mind when his foot slips and he realises that he can't hold on and is now going to fall.

I saw another video years ago of an elderly tight-rope walker who slips and falls high over a city street. The same there. His hand almost grabs the rope but he slips and falls. If it's true that everything goes in slow-motion during an accident then a fall from a great height would give you plenty of time to know what's coming.

The only thing worse than seeing your nearest and dearest crumble away in front of you is seeing yourself crumbling away.

I found a calendar I bought about 10 years ago for her indoors (one of those personalised ones where you send photos and they make a one to order) and saw this very youthful bloke staring back at me...then I looked in the mirror...oh dear.
 
Mine:

First death was the family dog..my dog really. I took her to teh vets and was told she wouldn't be coming home. I was asked if i wanted to be there while they put her to sleep.. i couldn't. I just had to walk out the room and go.

Then my father. My mum wouldn't go to see him in hospital in his dying hours, she couldn't bring herself to do so despite the insistence of others that she'd regret it. They were wrong and shouldn't have tried. I wasn't with him either when he passed. I did see his body in the funeral home.. i don't remember an emotional response.. he was a smooth waxwork. Maybe slight fascination..the first dead body i'd ever seen.

My brother. He died in a hospice a week or so after going in for respite. Again i was offered the chance to see him on his last day, and couldn't do it.. as with my father the fear that crushed me is my presence acknowledging their coming death to them. The fear of seeing their awareness of it always crippled me. My sister - who has been at all 3 close family deaths at the moment of death itself, so i think has come to, well, appreciate the experience perhaps. - she was there with him. Amusingly her partner said farewell to my seemingly unconscious brother and said it was a pleasure having known him, only for the not quite deceased to answer back "ive not gone yet".....When he did, according to my sister, he did the oft reported thing of reaching out his hand to something above him.

His was the only body laid out that had an emotional impact. We arrived at the funeral home in advance of escorting the body to the service. I walked in and other family members were in there chatting away and i got the shock of my life to pass the open side room where his coffin was, seeing him lying there, fully himself, but eyes closed. I hadn't anticipated seeing him so it took my breath away.

My mother's death is the only one i was present at. I reported it on here on the day. No one had said she was dying..except me, who was seeing the signs in her changing behaviours...i was convinced of it, more or less. Confirmation came when the carers who washed her in the morning told me she had said (despite intelligible speech having become impossible in the preceding weeks and months) in plain english "I've just been down the road with Gerry. It was lovely". Gerry was my dad. It was my knowledge of death bed visons etc that alerted me that death was imminent and i texted my siblings to come to the house. In fact one of them..my sister!..was there when death began later that day...she started choking on the fluids building in her lungs. But the process of breathing her last took an hour or so, enough time for the remaining sibling to get to the house and be all around the bed with her. She was unconscious of course.. After a while tension went out of it and conversation became light or practical...looking up on our phones about the death rattle etc.. Checking and noting as the breaths became fewer. When she finally breathed her last, nothing miraculous happened. Having read the superstition i turned and calmly opened a window to "let the soul out". Something in the act of turning my back triggered a release of emotion i didn't know was there... i howled...the breath left my body with such force and continuance I couldn't pause to breathe in and started to panic that i myself was going to suffocate.

But then all was quiet. I can't say she looked like she was asleep, as sleeping people breathe and move. She was still and absent. I think you become emotionally detached from the body very quickly....you do appreciate its just a shell they're taking away.
 
I have sat with both of my dogs when they were put to sleep. The first one, my big dog, was more traumatic as it was hard to find a vein and he wasn't enjoying them trying. Second one, with the small dog, she just lay on my lap and was gone. Very peaceful. But it's not a great 'last image' of them to have in your head. I try to remember them as they were when they were young and annoyingly active, but those memories seem to have got overlaid with the last days.

One of the reasons I didn't want to see my dad after he'd gone. It seems easier to remember the good times when you haven't seen the very end.
 
... I have a morbid curiosity however, not so much about the moment of death but of the seconds before it when the realisation comes. For example, I am haunted by the youtube clip of a man trying to climb down the front of the WTC. He slips and falls and is carried away by the wind as slowly and as inevitably as a dropped feather. I am tortured by the thought of the fear entering his mind when his foot slips and he realises that he can't hold on and is now going to fall.

I saw another video years ago of an elderly tight-rope walker who slips and falls high over a city street. The same there. His hand almost grabs the rope but he slips and falls. If it's true that everything goes in slow-motion during an accident then a fall from a great height would give you plenty of time to know what's coming.

In the context of sudden / traumatic incidents such as you describe ...

Once the realization of helplessness and seeming inevitability occurs there's an ordered sequence of subjective events. First, the panic rises to a threshold at which a (probably) somatic response is triggered. This initiates an automatic, chronologically ordered dump of episodic memory (the 'total life recall' phenomenon). This dump concludes with a deep somatic stress blow-off and relaxation (probably a massive endorphin rush) that induces a detached attitude toward imminent injury / death.

I've experienced the sequence (partially and wholly) more than once. As a result, I no longer fear what subjectively occurs when one sees sudden death coming.
 
I am registered nurse (retired now) I worked for 20+ years in the nhs, AED and acute male surgery. I saw many deaths over that time. There is nothing to fear in dying as far as saw, it’s just one second to the next. I sat with my dad when he died, it was so peaceful and calm, I thank God for that, he was not in any pain.
 
At my age, I have no grand parents and whilst I attended all of their funerals, I was not present as their deaths. My mother is still alive and healthy although my father died unexpectedly when I was 20. He was 53, woke with a headache, went to work, collapsed, was taken to hospital with initial thoughts being he'd suffered a cardiac arrest only to discover he'd suffered an enormous cerebral haemorrhage.
When my sister and I got there, he was on a life support system and things were grim. It was determined early in the morning that he was brain dead and the machinery was keeping his body functioning.
This was in November of 1985 and organ donation was a rare thing, but becoming more aware publicly as you had only just recently been able to give consent to become an organ donor via your driver licence. Oddly enough, my father and I had had this very discussion just 3 weeks earlier when he told me that he was all for it and anyone was welcome to anything they could use from him when his time was up.
At around 9 am a doctor approached my sister and I (my sister being legally next of kin being the older of us two, my parents being divorced) and asked if we were willing to donate his kidneys. We discussed this briefly and gave consent. Within 90 minutes they had found two two people suitable to receive his kidneys.
The ran us though the surgical procedure, assuring us that he would still be treated as a patient and given the full courtesy one would expect and not simply as a cadaver. With that we went to say our goodbyes.
Whilst he was still breathing with the aid of the machine, he was gone. He just wasn't the man I knew as my father laying there in the hospital bed. I recall him looking very, very small as though all of the air had left him and he'd deflated.
We weren't rushed and left after a while. Upon leaving the intensive care unit, it was a requirement to was your hands with an antiseptic lotion. As we did so, an elderly gentleman in a bed next to the basins passed away, his heart monitor flat lining. I assume it was expected as no one rushed to offer him any aid.
We too went to see my father in the funeral home. I admit that I went more out of curiosity and at my grandmother's request. It didn't help the grieving process as he looked even smaller, his hair combed the wrong way and his coffin looked claustrophobic and tiny.
The only thing that truly made any sense of his death was the thought that there were two people now alive because of him. Organ donation at the time was strictly anonymous. We had no idea who his organs went to, nor did the recipients know where they came from, but today I like to think that perhaps there are children, maybe grandchildren of the people he helped around who wouldn't have been if he hadn't have died that day... so at least something good came of it.

I have been there for numerous pet deaths, the most recent one just 6 months ago when our dog Poppy was put to sleep after a sudden illness that caused massive internal bleeding. Traumatic, upsetting, heart wrenching and unforgettable for all of the wrong reasons. I have tears streaming down my face remembering all of the emotion as I write this.
 
Pet deaths can be dreadful, and having your pet 'put to sleep' can be reassuringly peaceful -but not always.
I've always had the vet come out to my house to do the deed, and over the years that has worked well for two of my cats.
But the third time, the cat put up a struggle and I felt absolutely dreadful about it. (13 years ago and I can still hardly bear to think about it.)
 
How awful, recycled, I really feel for you. Our cat squeak had to be put down six years ago and I still feel it as though I was cut with a knife.
She went downhill after our tabby Bubble (see my avatar) who was her brother had been killed by a dog outside our front door. She just coudln't cope. Cats are far more emotionally vulnerable than people think.
 
Lord Lucan, I cry every time I think about the dogs. I think because *I* had to make the decision that the time had come - although it clearly had for both of them (loss of use of back legs). With my mum and dad, they both died of natural causes, both mercifully before things got any worse, both in their own beds in their own home.

With the dogs I had to actually make the call. Sitting waiting for the vet to arrive (or, in the case of small dog, for it to be time to take her down to the surgery) has to go down as some of the worst times in my life. Knowing what was coming, and being on countdown for it...

Yep. Cry every time.
 
When my BiL died it was the time leading up to the moment of transition that was awful. His actual death was calm, peaceful and holding the hands of his partner and his elder brother (Mr Frideswide).

The inevitability of it, and the run up, did give him a chance to say exactly what he wanted and it was a help to us afterwards.

He got pleasure from being able to leave his head, neck and brain for dissection (or research if possible). Wanted to contribute to the science that hadn't managed to save him.
 
Lord Lucan, I cry every time I think about the dogs. I think because *I* had to make the decision that the time had come - although it clearly had for both of them (loss of use of back legs). With my mum and dad, they both died of natural causes, both mercifully before things got any worse, both in their own beds in their own home.

With the dogs I had to actually make the call. Sitting waiting for the vet to arrive (or, in the case of small dog, for it to be time to take her down to the surgery) has to go down as some of the worst times in my life. Knowing what was coming, and being on countdown for it...

Yep. Cry every time.

I sympathize. Every pet owner most likely will be there at one time or another. When our dog Poppy was put to sleep 6 months ago the vet and his assistant came to our home, it was as peaceful as possible. She died in my wife's arms as I stroked her head but that wait... My goodness. That 90 minutes from the time we made the call until their arrival was an endurance I don't want to endure again. We still have one dog, Toby who hasn't coped well with her death. They came home together and lived for 13 years together. He still looks for her often and it's heart breaking.
 
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