Last Dying Words
by Jamie Butler
The readings which make the most impact on others contains absolute “proof of purchase”. What I mean is, when the sitter gets to hear the perfect recantation of their family members last dying wish or words. Here are a few of those sessions I recall.
I remember several years back I was speaking to a daughter whom set up an appointment to speak to her mother that had recently passed away. The connection was clear and I was able to describe the mother, her ailments and how she was in a hospital when she died, with her bed pulled up next to the window. The daughter was moved to hear me know the details of her mother’s last days so well. Then the mother kept repeating to me, “All I wanted to do was lay down and die.” Dragging out the vowel sounds in “all” and “wanted”.
I questioned the mother if she wanted me to tell this to the daughter. “Oh yes! Tell her….aaaall I waaaanted to do was lay down and die.” Well after hearing it a few times it became a little funny to me. So I told the daughter in a lighthearted way, imitating her mother (thinking it was funnier this way). Well I ate my words in the next few moments. The daughter began to cry and tell her mother, “I know, I know, I know. I tried but those nurses kept propping you back up!”
Then I realized what the mother was saying was literal, not just some metaphor. The daughter began to tell me that her mother had a hard time eating and keeping it down, so the nurses would prop her up to help the digestion. But, all the mother wanted to do was lay flat and rest before she died. When the end came close the daughter and her sister decided to hold vigil and each would take turns staying over night making sure they would lay their mother down after the nurse left the room.
Once when it was the daughter’s turn, she had to leave to room to get something to eat. She made sure her mother was comfortable and laying flat. She felt confident enough she would not be gone long and all was well. Upon returning she found her mother had passed away, and she was sitting up. During her short leave a nurse had come in and sat up the mother stuffed the pillows behind her head, for the sake of digestion. The mother’s final wish to die lying down was not granted.
The name, dates, and locations have all been changed to protect the sitter’s privacy.
3 comments to Last Dying Words
Jamie Wise
March 10, 2009I have tortured myself with the same thoughts. My dad was in a coma for a week following a brain aneurysm. As he laid in that bed for a week, hooked to all sorts of machines completely helpless, totally exposed for all of those to see who came to his bedside, I cringed inside because my dad was such a private person…private to the extreme. I only remember him being in the hospital one other time and he refused to change out of his street clothes and into a hospital gown. He wouldn’t even lay in the bed…he sat in a chair in the hospital room until everyone left for the night. He refused to let anyone see him as vulnerable.
So as he’s laying there dying under prying eyes by some who hadn’t seen my dad in years. I wondered what he would have thought of this and how he would be mortified to know these people were looking at him in this condition and it hurt my soul because I’ve never seen a weak or vulnerable side to my dad…he was always the tough, nothing can hurt me big man.
When I had a reading with Jamie she said that he conveyed to her that he felt loved and cared for. That he didn’t feel like he deserved the love he was getting from us as we sat with him. Nothing came up about the others who briefly stopped in to “visit” (look-see). So this was comforting to me, however it was 9 months after he passed that I first spoke with Jamie so I had carried these feelings around for quite a while.
Jamie Gum Wise
Marco
October 26, 2009The only last words of someone close to me that I’m aware of were my father’s. Dying in hospital, in Rome, Italy, from complications of recurrent strokes, he had lost his ability to speak his native Italian and could speak only his second language – true British English. He was unable to converse with his nurses. My brother, an American trained physician, visited him. My brother told me that our father’s last words were, “This is madness.”
Although my brother spent more time over the years with our father than I did, I’ve always felt my brother never understood him, or his way of thinking. My brother dismissed those last words as the raving of a stroke addled mind and considered the matter closed. I heard those words as so typical of how my father would assess the miserable state of lying in solitary (both physically and communicatively) awaiting the inevitable while the medical staff tested and medicated him – to what purpose?
That day I “lost” my father; and, again, my brother went “missing in action.” Marco
Amanda
August 5, 2015My mom took her life last yr in May and I always winder as she hid crouched in the guest bedroom closet.. What were her thoughts or how bad was her pain? Was she crying. Or just waiting for the 3mos worth of anti depressants to take affect. My mother was always suicidal. Except 15 yrs when maybe it was highs of her bi polar. But now my dad 6 mos later is fighting to stay alive. He was diagnosed with a glioblastoma stage 4 brain tumor in his temporal lobe. He loved my mom so much. This is all been devastating but I always wonder what she would have said if she had the chance..