This powerful account illustrates how the dying engage the metaphors of their lives as they cross into the Great Mystery. Metaphors help us equate what is unknown with what is known — and can offer us comfort and a reference point as we make sense of extraordinary experiences. This may be why our natural environment, like our lifetime career, offers a familiar touch point that emerges in final words, foreshadowing a big event. Metaphors about a change in environmental conditions feature in the accounts of several people who shared last words with me:
“The big storm is coming.”
“I think the rain is coming. Do you think it is going to rain?”
“The tide is turning.”
“Hearing Is Healing
A Few Final Words
Do you hear that music? It is so beautiful!
It is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. Bye-bye.
— Claire, Final Words Project participant, to her grown children a few hours before dying”
“It is not surprising, then, to see these cultural metaphors emerge in transcripts of the Final Words Project that describe things breaking down or coming apart, as in these examples:
“My modality is broken.”
“I need maintenance for this.”
“I need time to get everything in order.”
“Everything in pieces. . .so many pieces.”
“I got to put this all back together.”
“Dear, our connection in the north has made an error, has made a wrong turn.”
The phrase “I need to put things in order” emerges in several of the transcripts from my research — and boxes are a recurring symbol of putting things in ord”
“Metaphors Evolve during the Dying Process
Martha Jo Atkins, a death educator and author of the book Signposts of Dying, told me that in her experience, the metaphors that people utter evolve as death nears. She explained that someone might first indicate that something is needed or is missing, for example, “I need my map. . .” That may change to “Who has my suitcase? I need my suitcase.” Later the individual may say, “My suitcase is packed. I am ready to go now”
“I Leave You with These Words
Travel Metaphors Speak of a Coming Voyage
I’ve got to get off, get off!
Off of this life.
I’m dying. I’m dying.
The trains keep going by.
The trains keep going by, but I can’t get on.
I’ve got the ticket. I have the ticket.
— James, Final Words Project participant”
“We Not Only Depart, We Arrive
In accounts collected for the Final Words Project, we hear not only about departing but also about arriving. Common are exclamations about arriving and then finding individuals the dying person loved who preceded that person in death. One woman described her mother as saying, “It’s time to get up, get up, get up. . .I am coming, Richard!” A nurse explained, “One of my patients last week said, ‘Dad, I’m here!’ His face smooth and almost smiling, he then said three times, ‘He’s leaving, he’s leaving, he’s leaving.’ Then he passed away.”
“Repetition, Repetition, Repetition
Intensified Language in Our Last Days
A place that is so beautiful, is shining like diamonds, Mom, oh my God, Mom, so beautiful!
— Daria, Final Words Project
“Oh, more. . .more. . .more worlds and worlds. . .and worlds.”
“The green dimension! The green dimension!”
“I’m happy. I’m happy!”
“Beautiful, so beautiful!”
There are also expressions of intensified anguish or pain or fear, such as these last words from a young man’s father:
“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”
“I am scared to die. Help me! Help me”
“Here are some typical kinds of pronouncements that I encountered:
Reassurance
“I feel secure. I feel so secure.”
“Tell everyone I am all right. I am all right.”
“There is no fear. . .no fear. . .no fear.”
Gratitude
“I have to thank them. I want to thank them. I want to thank them.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you.”
The End
“I am dying, I am dying, and there are all these people here.”
“I am dying. I am dying.”
“I am daring. . .daring, daring to die.”
“Bye. Bye. Bye now.”
Resistance
“Go away! Go away! I am not ready yet!”
“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”
“I am tired. So tired. I am losing it. Losing it.”
“Hannah Roberts Brockow, who works in a hospice as a harp therapy practitioner, shared the following reflections with me about the number three:
I often hear these repetitive final phrases from the dying, and in my experience they, too, come in threes. Why three? It’s a powerful number. The triangle is the strongest, most stable geometric shape. Three appears in religions all over the world in the distinctions of deities (Father, Son, Holy Spirit; Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva), and in the ways we pray to them (Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus; Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh; Namastasyei, Namastasyei, Namastasyei Namo Namaha). Nearly all sacred numbers in the world’s religions are divided by three: 9, 33, 72, 108, to name a few. Jesus lived to be thirty-three. Ayurveda divides us into three doshas, and we these days divide ourselves into body, mind, and spirit.”
“Repetition connects us to what is musical — that is, to tempo and pitch, which connect us more immediately to the nonverbal world, the world we can access only beyond literal language: “Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow!”
Semantic satiation
“The repetition in the language of the dying expresses a number of themes, from agony to ecstasy. While this language may not sate our curiosity about what exists beyond the threshold, the use of repetition suggests that there are complex and systematic patterns at work in it. This kind of organization indicates that there may be much more than a disintegrating mind at play during our final days.”
“Nonsense or a New Sense?
Making Meaning out of Unintelligible Language at the End of Life
Yes, I would like some scrambled eggs, but where would you reappear?
— Bill, Final Words Project participant”
“Linguistic nonsense refers to phrases and sentences that, in isolation, don’t make sense to us. They have word combinations that are unintelligible. Some examples:
“Tell Jack my modality is broken.” (Modalities don’t break.)
“Introductory offer: store is closing for foods and goods run by the university.” (The terms introductory offer and closing for foods and goods are contradictory — and a university does not usually offer foods and goods.)
“There is so much so in sorrow.” (So is not a noun. How can there be so much of it in sorrow?)
“Water is most reliable.” (Water generally is not associated with reliability, and it is not clear what the superlative most refers to.”
“Help me down the rabbit hole.”
“I am living between two places. . .Would like to make my place mark the other place. . .Remarkable.”
“Hurry up, get me down. . .please. . .it’s the end.”
“No. Wait a minute. You are one stop from real hope which means. . .one stop from real hope.”
“I want to pull those down to earth somehow. . .I don’t really know. . .no more earth binding.”
“Help me lie down.”
“I got to go down there. I have to go down.”
“I’ve got to get down to earth. Help me.”
“That is who we are, where we are headed, okay, that’s it.”
“I’m on top now — moving on top.”
“I am crossing up! Crossing up!”
“I’ve got to get off, get off! Off of this life. I’m dying. I’m dying.”
“I am falling. I am falling but I am not ready to go. They are getting ready to pick me up. When I fall, they are going to pick me up.”
Prepositional nonsense
“Get me my checkbook since I have to pay to get in.”
“I need my pearls for the dance tonight.” (There is no dance.)
“Please massage my feet so I can get down into the rabbit hole.” (The speaker’s girlfriend is massaging his feet while he lies on a hospital bed. There are no holes.)
“Get my camera. I need to take a picture of this.” (There is nothing to take a picture of.)
“They left the ladders, but the ladders are too short to go up there.” (The speaker is referring to ladders outside her bedroom window.)
“Please leave some money and baby clothes on my bed. I will need them in heaven when I have my baby.” (The speaker is a thirteen-year-old girl dying of cancer.)
“I better get dressed now. I need to go home.”
“Get me scissors so I can cut this out of here.”
“Help me thread this pencil to the other side”
HYBRID NONSENSE
“Zen Buddhists use nonsense as a means of spiritual enlightenment. Zen masters present unanswerable questions, known as koans, to students. Some koans are nonsense questions: “Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?” and “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?” The questions are designed to move students away from understanding life only in a logical way and to connect them with something that is ineffable, not of the ordinary world as we know it. Koans invite us to enter into another way of thinking, and they seem to baffle our minds while bringing us to a greater understanding.”
“The nonreferential pronouns it and this (and a few other terms) leave the listener wondering, as in the following examples:
“It is very beautiful over there.” (What exactly is beautiful, and where is “there”?)
“Too bad I cannot tell you of all of this.” (What is “this”?)
“It’s not what you think.” (What is it, then?)
“My vocabulary did this to me” (from poet Jack Spicer).
“Lots of people have this. . .”
“It’s all in one piece. . .It’s all in once piece. . .What you see in different pieces. . .it’s all in one piece.”
“Too bad I cannot tell of all I have seen.
“I know that’s not what’s happening for me now, but I know what’s happening is. . .”
“I can’t tell you about it.”
“You will find out later.” (About what?
“References to life being an illusion also emerge in the accounts and transcripts with the same kind of nonreferential speech:
“It is all a hoax. Just an illusion.” (Italics added; Roger Ebert’s well-documented last words. What is a hoax?)
“Today early the Lord told me in representation.” (What did he tell you?)
“Amazing! I don’t believe it! These are for real?” (What do “it” and “these” refer to?)”
“Visions of Crowds
“Who are all those people out there?”
“There are so many people in here. I don’t have time to talk to all these people.”
“My father died on a Friday morning. He spent the entire Wednesday before that talking, sometimes out loud and sometimes muttering under his breath to a variety of people he had known throughout his life. It was the most amazing thing I have ever
“Arrival of Deceased Loved Ones
While dying people may describe seeing groups of people, they most commonly identify a loved one, usually a family member, as having come to bring them “home” or take them somewhere.
This example from Donna is typical: “It was as if my dad were speaking to my mom — who had died ten years earlier — by phone, and I heard only his end of the telephone call. He was so excited and happy. It was hard to believe that it was just imagination. Something very real seemed to be going on.”
The reunions are often joyous. They not only offer comfort to those who are dying but also can reassure those who are nearby and who understand what is going on and are not afraid. While these “take-away figures” remain unseen by us, they are often vivid to those who do see them. “Don’t you see him there? There he is!” one sixty-eight-year-old mother exclaimed to her daughter, pointing to the younger woman’s father, who had died ten years earlier. “Here’s Mom, I have to go now” was a phrase I heard from several people.”
“Music, Bells, Chimes
There were also descriptions of beautiful music and sounds in the accounts people shared with me:
My mother said there was music: “It is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.” I reassured her it must be angels. I had the sad gut feeling this would be our last time together in this lifetime. I could see her face light up, and that it was drawn to this music she heard. I felt compelled to tell her that I was okay and that everyone was going to be okay, giving her permission to go. I looked back as I left that night and saw her sit up in the bed and wave good-bye. She passed away that night. Eighteen years have passed, and I still can’t keep a dry eye with this
“Men in Black
The image of men in black emerged a few times in the Final Words Project interviews and transcripts, as in this example:
All week she had been talking about these men in black suits standing in her room. Well, I went to assist the other staff in turning her, and before we did so, she said, “Don’t turn me. Those men are waiting for me.” We asked her why they were there and what they wanted. She stated, “They want to take me.” We tried to adjust her without completely turning her, and she was fine. Then hours later, she was turned and took her last breath.
Madelaine Lawrence reports that while not as prominent as other deathbed visions, the Grim Reaper and other dark images appeared in her research into end-of-life and near-death visions. They do not seem to be as prominent, but they do exist. For example, a woman whose husband
was dying from end-stage liver cancer reports her husband saw shadow people at the edge of his room. In his case he said there were 12 to 20 of them. He asked her to take a trip, hoping they[…]”
“Animals, Young Children, and Landscapes
Among the less common visions described by dying people are those that feature animals, children, and landscapes. A few people referred to seeing both deceased pets and deceased animals that were unfamiliar but reassuring to the dying person. I encountered references to dogs, cats, and butterflies.
Butterflies often appear as a symbol of the transformative power of death as we shed the cocoon of our bodies for the free flight of the spirit. They function as a symbol of hope and immortality in a variety of contexts — including in one of the most dispiriting environments imaginable. At Majdanek, a Nazi German concentration camp built in Poland, hundreds of butterflies were scratched onto the walls of the children’s barracks with fingernails and pebbles
“There is a world that the dying seem to enter that is sometimes shared with us briefly. A 2014 research study at the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care demonstrated that end-of-life dreams and visions (ELDVs) are common. Eighty-seven percent of the study’s participants reported dreams or visions; 72 percent of those entailed reunions with deceased loved ones, while 52 percent of the visions were related to themes of preparing to go somewhere. The visions appeared months, weeks, days, or hours before death and typically lessened the fear of dying among those experiencing them, making their transition from life to death easier. While it is common for people to experience discomfort, fear, anxiety, and agitation before dying, “a person’s fear of death often diminishes as a direct result of ELDVs, and what arises is new insight into mortality. . . .ELDVs do not deny death, but in fact, [they] transcend the dying experience.”
“My friend and former colleague Dr. Erica Goldblatt Hyatt and I discussed this question one day. “Evolutionary programming is aimed at increasing our survival, right? So why would we be programmed biologically to find comfort or even transcendence in dying?” she asked me. “If we are speaking of pure biological functioning, wouldn’t our survival be selected for traits that do not make for a peaceful and comforting death experience?” Her question is a good one. Is it possible that death represents an entirely metaphysical process in which all the rules that might apply to our physical bodies and to survival of the fittest are completely abandoned for something else? Do we leave behind the physical world, and all its rules, including those of literal language, to enter another world that we can perceive only as we look out from the threshold between life and death?
Isabelle Chauffeton Saavedra, a psychic medium, researcher, and author, was raised in a family of scientists and has a firm grounding in physics and mathematics. She has spent her life reconciling the two poles of her life: her scientific training and her psychic work.
One of the many ways she understands her own psychic[…]”
“Lullabies and Good-Byes
Is Our First and Final Language Unspoken?
There was no speaking, as the person’s lips never moved, and neither did mine. But there were words.
It was a question: “Are you ready?”
— Tim, Final Words Project participant”
“Researchers Geoffrey Leigh, Jean Metzker, and Nathan Metzker explain that this may be a result of a unique way that parents and their young children communicate. The research team investigated language in communications between parent and infant at the beginning of the language acquisition continuum, discussed in their unpublished 2012 paper “Essence Theory.” Their studies indicate that parents and infants communicate energetically and “telepathically” before spoken language is fully mastered. As infants gain spoken language, the ability to communicate in nonverbal ways diminishes. They explain that the same kind of communication that is documented in near-death experiences as “telepathic and nonlinguistic” can occur in the communications between babies and their caregivers”
“Before my dear friend Yukiko died, her friend and I were sitting by her bedside listening to the silence and taking in the beauty of our beloved friend. She then turned to us and very quietly said, “My mom was here. We had the best conversation. It was so good to see her again.” Yukiko went on to tell us the small details of the conversation.
Yukiko’s friend whispered to me: “Her mom lives in Japan. There is no way she was here.”
I asked Yukiko, “Do you remember the time that she was here?”
She replied, “Oh, yes!” right away, with as much enthusiasm as her small and frail body could muster as she told us the exact time.
The next day as I was sitting beside Yukiko, her longtime friend entered the room with an excited look on her face. I could tell she was about ready to burst with the news she was about to tell me, so I remained silent.
“You know that story about Yukiko’s mother yesterday.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I emailed Yukiko’s mother, as I normally do in order to give her a status update on Yukiko. You won’t believe this, but[…]”
“Terri Daniel, author of Embracing Death and A Swan in Heaven, describes the remarkable evolution of her telepathic/psychic gifts as her terminally ill son, Daniel, lost his ability to speak:
As my telepathic skills were increasing, Danny’s ability to speak was diminishing. Before the onset of his illness, he was a normal boy with superior language skills, but as the disease progressed, he gradually lost the power of speech along with most of his other physical abilities. During the latter part of his illness he could express himself well enough to let me know if he was hungry or cold, and respond to simple questions with one-word answers. But by the time he died, he had been completely without words for nearly two years. We had learned to communicate using a natural form of telepathy similar to the way mothers communicate with their pre-verbal children.”
“Winn transcribed and shared her father’s final words with me over a period of several months. One day she sent me an email about a conversation she had had with Mary, a veteran hospice social worker, in which they discussed the similarities between infants and the dying. Winn talked about how similar were the transitions of birth and death:
Just as every woman and newborn have their unique way of labor and entrance, so does each human have their own unique way of leaving this realm. Sometimes quick and easy, sometimes slow and easy, sometimes intense labor, sometimes not. Babies get the hiccups a lot. . .so does daddy-o. Babies need to be fed, so does daddy-o. And once toddlers begin getting words, they often talk nonsense, messages that come from a place beyond the senses.”
“Stillman also suggested that the nonsense we hear in the spoken words of the autistic may be a kind of “by-product,” like exhaust from a car, but in this case a by-product of leaving behind the traditional ways of processing language to engage in a more symbolic, unspoken one. This seems to parallel some of Newberg’s research into the regions of the brain that are associated with mystical states and with a decrease in purposeful, meaningful language. The nonsense of autism and the nonsense associated with dying may both reflect a shift away from the functioning or processing of the more purposeful, literally oriented language centers.”
“The Sunset Day: Food and Forgiveness
The inner voice seems to emerge with resounding clarity in the window of time before death that many health-care providers call the sunset day and researchers call terminal lucidity. Hospice workers told me that the sunset day usually occurs a few days before the person dies and offers at least a few minutes, and sometimes a whole day, in which the dying person suddenly has heightened lucidity, a livelier appearance, and more energy. The term terminal lucidity, which refers to the same phenomenon, was coined several years ago by German biologist Michael Nahm in his 2009 article in the Journal of Near-Death Studies.
People I interviewed described how their loved ones who had been relatively nonresponsive suddenly emerged from their deeply internal and quiet state and spoke words of kindness, reassurance, or guidance for a short time before dying. Several people described a kind of glow or lightness around their beloved. This email summarizes what I heard often: “In those days before he died, he grew luminous. His face cleared and his eyes widened.”
The term sunset day is often used because the burst of lucidity shortly before death reminds
“Cynthia shared this story about her father’s sunset day:
One of the clearest indications that my father was dying was that he could not eat. For most of his life, eating was a celebrated ritual. In the days and weeks before dying, he did not want to eat or drink anything. Until three days before he died, my daughter and I were home alone with him. The man who seemed frozen in silence emerged from his sleep and said, “I feel like having some pot roast — the pot roast you cook. And I would love some pineapple upside-down cake. I would love that.”
“Similar accounts include the following:
“My mother was in a coma for three weeks. One day, her eyes popped open. She looked at me and said, ‘Tell everyone I am okay and that I love them.’ She died five hours later.”
“My mother had not communicated in days. I was thinking I needed a break from all this. Then my mother began to move. I prayed, got a chair, and an hour later her upper body rose. She looked right at me and said, ‘I love you.’”
“Bill had not spoken in weeks. I sat next to him, waiting, hoping he would say something. And then, one evening, he opened his eyes, reached out his hand, and said, ‘It’s not what you think,’ and then sank back into wordlessness and died two days later.”
“Jordan White explained how he was stunned by his mother’s coherence a few days before she died, when she started talking about the files in the study that held all the family financial information. Her Alzheimer’s disease had led to nerve cell death and tissue loss; with time, her brain had shrunk dramatically, affecting nearly all its functions. Knowing this, he wondered whether his mother’s debilitated brain was truly responsible for the production of language and awareness in those final words. Who or what was it that lovingly told her son of the location of the files after not having spoken lucidly in
“Unspoken Connections: Reaching
Death educator Martha Jo Atkins reported to me that, “as people come very close to death, they often speak less and start reaching, as if to something or someone. One hand goes up, and then it moves in a symphony of motion. A change often sweeps across the person’s face — sometimes the person’s upper body brightens.”
I remember that for a moment, in the last days of my father’s life, his hands were pointed toward the ceiling and were fluttering like butterflies. His hands reached up and his fingers stroked the air; it was as if he were reaching to someone I could not see.”
“I’ll Call You When I Get There
After-Death Communication
Do not cry too long,
let that laughter of your love
illuminate the skies,
for I will always hear you
— Automatic writing inspired by my father”
“Bill and Judy Guggenheim’s After-Death Communication Project, which was founded in 1988, reported having received thousands of accounts of after-death communication. Julia Assante, in her book The Last Frontier, writes, “The percentage of people reporting contact with the dead in surveys ranges anywhere from 42 to 72 percent. Widows having contact with their deceased husbands can go as high as 92 percent. If the surveys had included children and deathbed encounters, which are extremely common, the percentages would have been even heftier. A whopping 75 percent of parents who lost a child had an encounter within a year of the child’s death. But a sad 75 percent of all those who had encounters reported not mentioning them to anyone for fear of ridicule”
“Doorbells, Alarms, and Lightbulbs
Among the most common of synchronicities are those related to electricity. I received many accounts of people who have received messages at the time of someone’s death, or soon after, that are communicated with the help of electricity — doorbells, alarms, and lightbulbs.”
“High-Tech Talking
Accounts of communication from the dying and the dead have been recorded throughout time and cultures. Our modern-day accounts now include this new twist: text messages. The following account sent to me by Debbie Ribar comes from her sister-in-law Joanne Moylan Aubé:
My father passed away last January while I was sitting outside with my mom (miles from the assisted-living facility). My brother was by Dad’s side at this time, because Dad was breathing heavily and nearing the end of his life. He was not conscious. While I was sitting peacefully in my brother’s backyard, my iPhone made a noise similar to Siri’s beeping response. I looked at the phone and saw a text, which showed up as though I had written it. It said, “Was leaving heavily might be just wind and downy might be ready to go bad that I like pneumonia now maybe get tired I’m down I’m going to be around anymore.”
I freaked out and called my brother, who was as shocked as I was by this message. After reading it over and over, I determined it meant: “I am breathing heavily now and might be winding[…]”
“Rich Shlicht explained that he went for a walk soon after the passing of his mother, thinking to himself how he wished she would give him some sign of an afterlife. Soon after, a sparrow appeared and walked with him on the path, close to his heel, without fear, for over an hour. The bird then followed him home and sat on his bedroom windowsill, where it remained for minutes, as if to say, “I am here, son. All is well.”
Birds were the most common species in these accounts, but I also heard stories of butterflies, dogs, and cats. “Within a couple of minutes of Mom’s passing, we heard a cat meowing very loudly outside in the courtyard. It went on for a long time. I hadn’t seen or heard a cat in the days before or after Mom’s death.” Interestingly enough, these species also appeared in the visions of the dying. There were no other animals in my sample of deathbed or after-death communication.”
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