Tonight I stroked the hair of a woman breathing her last breath and told her it was okay to go. She had breathed 3 times in 5 minutes before stopping. Her husband and son were so upset and said she’d died already. Her eyes were glazed over and she had no control over her muscles anymore. But that last breath, as I held her hand, stroked her hair, and told her that her family loved her and it’s okay to go, her mouth moved a lot and for an instant her eyes stopped glazing over. Was she aware? Was she still there? Was her soul, her essence of being still in her body or even in the room?
The hospice nurses talk to the dead bodies and treat their bodies as lovingly as if they were still there, perhaps in the room watching, or perhaps to ease the pain for the families, I don’t know.
I feel I am a spiritually attuned person. I have been present for the deaths of many people and sometimes I can feel their death like a sigh of release and freedom and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes it feels as if the person is dead long before the last breath or muscle twitch and sometimes not. When is it that we die? When does the awareness leave us?
I have witnessed the biofeedback of prayer too many times to count. Whether unconscious, in a coma, or sleeping the sleep before death, their breathing becomes less labored, their heart rate and blood pressure evens out. It’s as if they are listening with their whole bodies… or is it that the body itself is listening even when the mental awareness is gone? Is it possible that the body is aware and “lives” on despite the loss of sentience?
I also have met many people who cannot communicate at all or very little, even though their eyes and slight body language burst with awareness. It’s as if their souls are trapped in their bodies, silently screaming to be let out. Most often by stroke combined with old age, people cannot hear anymore, or only slightly, cannot write or read words anymore, cannot speak anymore. They are left with broken or slurred words or blinking yes or no to demonstrate their primary needs. Hardly anyone takes the time to draw out what they want to tell you. Sometimes this also happens while on a ventilator or another debilitating illness. Sometimes people’s brains and bodies heal and they can at least talk again. But in my line of work, I don’t see that much anymore. Are these people alive even though their bodies betrayed them? Often they don’t last very long; one infection or fracture is all it takes. Or sometimes, with no symptoms of impending death, they just will themselves to die. No signs or symptoms of death, their heart just stops.
Despite life and death being the one thing we all have in common, no body ever talks about it. I can’t tell you how many reactions to conversations about death I have witnessed. I’m not talking about philosophic conversations in a classroom or dusty old tome. I’m talking about intimate contact with death. Even hospice workers and funeral home people skirt around much of the issue. They may respect the mystery of it more and understand the science of it more, but when asked when a person really dies, mostly you get “Who knows?” Don’t stare at it directly and challenge what is ingrained in us, just step back and respect the mystery.
I don’t really expect there to be one blanket answer to any of these questions. So much of it is contextual… and people believe what is comfortable and familiar to them… even if it is fire and brimstone. Ahhh… the after life. That is a subject for a completely different blog.
May God bless all who search for answers and who seek to be reassured there is meaning to all of this.
