A woman whose mother was about to transition to the next life describes her mother’s actions and statements. She was experiencing visitations from people living in the life after this life helping her make her transition. These deathbed and near-death visions are very common. A study by the foremost researchers in the field, Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson found that 50% of the tens of thousands of individuals about to die they studied in the United States and India had experiences of deathbed visions.
This is the woman’s account of what happened in the hours before her mother’s passing.
On Thursday my Mom woke up around 12:30 a.m. and couldn’t breathe. She called for me to take her to the hospital. The Police arrived and gave her some oxygen which helped her a little for the ride to the hospital. In the Emergency Room, she was given an IV, put on oxygen. and had blood drawn. I sat with her as we waited for a room to open up. She was put on a BiPAP machine so we weren’t able to communicate very well. They diagnosed her with RSV, she had fluid in her lungs, pleural effusion and was in end stage renal disease. She had been on dialysis 3 times a week for the last 5 years. We were finally put in a room on the Oncology floor.
I stayed with her while they did dialysis in her room on Thursday afternoon. She was not very responsive the entire time. Later in the evening, she was beginning to hallucinate and speak incoherently. The nurse asked me to help convince her to put the BiPAP on because she was refusing to use it. When I spoke with her she said she was done and ready to go. She did not want the BiPAP or dialysis anymore. I asked if she understood what would happen if she did that and she said that she understood. So I spoke with my brother about entering palliative care and we both decided that if that was what she wanted then we would honor her wishes. We put her into palliative care with the intention of bringing her home on Monday in Hospice Care.
Friday and Saturday while we were with her she started naming people that she was seeing at a party. She was a little upset with me because there were people at the party whose names she didn’t remember, and she was embarrassed. There were a lot of people…friends of mine and my brother, her mom and dad, my dad, friends of hers who had passed away. She was naming everyone, remembering names my brother and I didn’t remember. There were people at the party who were living and people who had already passed away.
She was talking about the food and “holding” a plate and “eating” some finger food that people had brought. The party went on for awhile. Later that night, she told me she was happy she had the chance to say her farewell to everyone and she was ready to follow God. She asked me not to be angry with her because she wanted to go and I wanted her to live longer. I said I would never be angry with her, that I just wanted her to be at peace.
On Saturday night she became more restless and started to pull at her blankets and clothes, trying to take them off. During this time they were giving her morphine, Atavan and Risperdal to help calm her, relieve pain, and enable her to breathe easier.
Sunday, she began talking about seeing someone named Robert who was waiting for her on the other side of a bridge. Later, she said he was behind a fence. She had to get to him. She asked me to stop touching her hair because I was messing it up and to let go of her hand because she didn’t want me to stop her. She kept talking about walking down the aisle toward Robert and as she did she would move her feet as if she was walking. A few times she told me I was a fool because I was going the wrong way and she was going to miss him. She told me to “Turn right! Turn right!” She didn’t want to miss him! She spelled his name several times and continued to try to get to him most of the day. She also was spelling out f,f,f,f,f,aaaaaaa,g, then mouthed some more letters that we couldn’t understand, several times. I’m not sure what that meant.
Later in the evening she stopped talking about getting to Robert and was just very restless before settling down. We left around 11 p.m. so she could get some sleep.
I was supposed to meet with the social worker Monday at 9 to begin the process of bringing her home on hospice care. Sadly, my brother received a call around 6:30 a.m. on Monday letting him know that she had passed away.
You can read more accounts of deathbed visions at https://www.liveabout.com/visions-at-the-hour-of-death-2594543 and at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-grief/201610/deathbed-visions-part-i
Dr. Christopher Kerr, chief medical officer of the Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo Research Department, describes near-death and deathbed dreams people have. https://earthschoolanswers.com/kerr/
Dr. Martha Jo Atkins, founder of the Death and Dying Institute, describes deathbed vision accounts she has received. https://earthschoolanswers.com/atkins/
