I have heard hospice nurses say during the last days that the person has mostly left but their body hasn’t caught up to it.
So, I think it is possible for the soul to travel first.
I look at my mom in her final days in hospice. It’s like she is there but not there.
Her body is there. Her eyes are closed. She is non responsive.
She isn’t in pain. I am grateful that she is on scheduled doses of morphine.
It seems so odd. It’s like there is only a shell left. The rest of her or the ‘real’ her is already gone.
Anyone else feel this way as their loved one is or was dying?
I think the topic is quite interesting. The questions that we all have about death all come to our consciousness when death is imminent for a loved one. Watching, listening and wondering.
How many hours a day do you or brother spend with mom? One thing that I still wonder about. Do our LO's want to be alone or with family when they pass?
Wondering about the actual process of dying is normal. Does answering these questions for ourselves make our own preparation easier?
Plus, they build strong bonds with their patients.
I think the bond is often stronger with nurses than with their doctor because they spend so much time with them and do more of the hands on care.
Each of us kids talked to him, prayed over him and told over and over that he could 'go' now. We'd be fine. We'd take care of mom.
He slid slowly into the next life between breaths. It was one of the sweetest moments of my life.
In the next couple of years, I had a continuing dream where my dad would appear to me, he'd come running up a hill, wearing a loose white gown and would hug me and talk to me. He had a full head of hair, which I never knew him to have.
Unbeknownst to me, all 5 of my kids had the exact same dream--right down to the detail of him having hair. Considering that one of them had never known him healthy, it was sweet for her.
My brother was younger in the dream and had beautiful dark hair again. He was well and healthy.
The odd thing was my mom had the same dream on the same night!
When I was telling her about my dream she told me the end of my dream before I could finish telling her!
We never had that happen before where mom and I had the same dream.
My brother loved to cook and serve people good food. He was serving our entire family food that he cooked.
We were very comforted by that dream.
Both of us had been praying for him because he was a tortured soul who had a lot of misery in his life.
We felt that he was finally at peace.
I think you may feel better if you read about astral projection. Dr Robert Crookall's papers, may help your feelings.
They have a sign by her that says, ‘No ice, only swabs.’ She isn’t in pain.
She looks like she’s dreaming or something. Her mouth is constantly open. I don’t know how long that she will linger on like this.
They do have her on continual regular doses of morphine.
For some reason, their body lingers. My brother did that too.
Dad was in the ER for what he thought may have been another heart attack. Husband and I were away, and asked our pastor to visit him. (mom never discussed his declining memory until dad showed up at our house, months before at 2am, with an alternate-reality ‘story’ and was not talking rationally.) I wanted pastor’s perspective.
Dad wasn’t very lucid. Dad Spent the next three months in/out of the hospital, rehab and finally long-term care. His last ER visit, I received a call from the Hospital asking me to help mom understand that they were doing extraordinary things to keep dad alive. Eventually, he was mistakenly put on a vent (no advance directives), and it was the most horrifying sight I’d ever seen. Finally, Mom understood dad wasn’t going to live. The vent was removed and dad was moved to a hospice room. I whispered something very familiar to him there, and he responded just as dad ALWAYS would.
We held his hands at bedside, and he was gone within the half hour.
I know she was seeing people on the other side...at one point she was arguing with someone that she had to wait for my daughter to come home; my daughter was sitting right there. Mom was clearly arguing...then all of a sudden, she opened her eyes, saw my daughter and said "oh, hi, Em, when did you get home?" My daughter told her "I've been here the whole time, grandma..." and my mom kind of harumphed under her breath...I have no doubt she had been arguing with my dad :)
She was also mostly non-responsive during her transition; but she did get agitated if we closed her bedroom door. I had the feeling that my dad was "standing" in the doorway while they talked to each other, and when the door was closed, she couldn't see him and got upset.
NHWM, I know how hard this is to go through - you go from wanting it to be over, and the fear that it will end. Still thinking of all of you during this time, and saying a few prayers along the way for peace for all of you...
I guess we won't know the answer to that question until we ourselves are at deaths door.
Yes, mom’s mouth is open most of the time.
I feel like you. She just doesn’t look like my mom.
I feel like she is dreaming or something. Does that sound weird?
The soul, the personality, the aware and conscious self is certainly minimized before the body ceases to function, but it seemed there was a small spark of my dad still there until the end.