Dead relatives and friends contacting the dying

Has anyone had this happen to dying relatives at all -

Last week my grandfather past away however a couple of days before he did, he was seen 'talking' to his brothers and friends. Nothing unusal there I here you say. The thing is that all of the people he was speaking to died some years ago.

The person that witnessed this also experienced the same thing when her partnered died a couple of years ago, he was seen talking to some dead relatives.

Is this the people that have passed getting the dying person ready and arrange the welcome?

Would be intereseted in hearing your thoughts as my father passed away 17.5 years ago and would love to know that he had the same treatment from the afterlife.

I used to work as a nurse, often we would see that indeed patients would say that they had seen and or spoken to a past family member or friend.

On several occasions patients would call for their mother in the days prior to their passing and would only calm down once they felt their mother was there - they would pass away within hours after they had found that relief
In combination with seeing their deceased mother, other relatives or friends,; the patients would often make the same movements with their hands, we used to say that the patient was preparing his "luggage" for his final trip. We always saw these signs as an indication that death would be eminent.

Whilst several patients have experienced this prior to their passing the question remains whether they are actually seeing their deceased relatives or whether it is a “trick” played by their brains to make the passing more comfortable.

the patients would often make the same movements with their hands

IF you don't mind would you describe these motions?

Thanks

Many times.

I was *visited* by a childhood friend of many years one night. Saw him and spoke with him plain as day. He came to say 'goodbye'.

On contacting his family in the morning I was informed he had committed suicide in the night. They asked why I was contacting them 'out of the blue'...so I told them of my nightly visit, described the clothing he wore etc - which was the clothing he was wearing when they found him.
They lived in a completely different town.

My brother was also visited by our Grandmother (whom he had lived with for many years). He woke up and she was sitting at the foot of his bed. He chatted with her for a while - then asked what she was doing there. She just said her goodbyes, passed on her love and disappeared.
That was the pretty much the exact time she passed away with Cancer.
My brother was onboard an NZ Frigate in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at the time...

I've been in the presence of numerous people in their last days/moments on this earth...and its rather common for these things to happen. Maybe it is a trick of the brain...however, when the dying person starts saying things like "Aunty so-n-so says she's happy you've put her picture on your mantle-piece" (when you have and this relative hasn't been in your house to know that)...well...things start getting a tad *deeper* than a simple 'trick of the brain'...

reply to post by silo13


...I think its referred to as 'Plucking'...

...it can manifest itself in different ways - I know of one person whose 'plucking' was mimicking smoking...

reply to post by silo13


Hard to explain, they make like “wrapping” movements with their hands. Over and over and cannot keep them still, even when relatives try to hold their hands the patients will or cannot stop.

Hope that clarify's it a bit for you.

reply to post by Woman on the moon


I too am a nurse and have seen these actions on far too many an occasion.

One of the spookiest things I have seen was a on a night shift where a patient was sleeping with her hand out of the side of the bed as if she was holding her dead husbands hand. I later found out from her son that she does that every night and her 'husband' sits next to the bed keeping watch over her.

It used to freak me right out when I first saw this ....... shudder.

I've heard of it as well. My grandma and grandpa that died within the last few years also supposedly talked to people that had died years ago. I did not see it first hand but my mom said they both mentioned seeing people they had known, to her.

I don't know what it is. But if it helps the dying be more comfortable, then maybe it's not such a bad thing.

[edit on 10/5/2008 by Blueracer]

I don't have any experiences to report, I just wanted to say that it always seemed to me that trying to explain these experiences by some 'trick of the brain' was altogether more far-fetched and stretching the evidence than the simple explanation that what these people experience is exactly what it appears to be - the spirits of relatives and friends come to fetch them home. I think that this is what gave rise to the ancient idea that we return to be with our ancestors, because effectively, that is exactly what most of us do.

I have been a nurse for for 38 years, and I can verify what the other nurses that have posted have said. When people are approaching death, especially if it is at the end of lingering illness, such as cancer, COPD, or Congestive HEart Failure, they often call for relatives that have gone on before them. Couriously enough, men seem to call most often for their mothers, while women tend to call for their fathers. Becasue of the area where I work, I have not been with many young people(thankfully) than have passed on, but other nurses who have, relate the same thing.
It is interesting to me that these people not only call out for their relatives, but they actually see them, and reach for them. And these patients are not always "confused." I have thought them to be hallucinating, but when I took the time talk with them, many of them were oriendted to time, place and self. THey just knew their time was near.

reply to post by Woman on the moon



I'd never heard of the hand-movements before

When you describe it as 'wrapping' .. do you mean movements similar to wrapping a parcel in paper ?

If you have the time, would be grateful for any further information you're able to provide

Since my first post, I have spoken to mum my who described the actions of my dying father -

She said that he could not even get out of bed at all or move much and was bed ridden, then one night I asked to stay at a neighbours house (friend of mine, I was 14 at the time) for no apparent reason. That night my father got out of bed and continuously walked up and down the stairs (he had been bed ridden with cancer and was in the last 2 weeks of life) and was knocking on the walls with his hands. My mother tried to call the doctors but he stopped her from using the phone for reasons only he would know. The next day, he went to hospice and unfortunately (or fortunately as he was in a lot of pain and had been ill for years) he died 2 weeks later.

This is information I did not know until my mum came round for lunch today and I told her of my original post.

RIP Dad

Edited to add 1 more sentence

[edit on 5-10-2008 by Gregandgemma]

My mother, who's been a nurse for over 30 years had one experience that I know of from a few years ago. She worked in a nursing home, and a patient was dying. She'd had dementia for quite some time, and she started to die not long after her husband died.

Anyhow, she apparently, a few hours before she passed away, looked in joy at the foot of her bed and said "Oh Bill! You're here!", which is the name of her husband who'd passed away. lol, I remember being told that because my Mum was in tears over it for hours.

A more personal experience, although not quite on subject, is when my Grandad was dying. He had a ruptured bowel, which, is agonising. He was on as much morphine as possible, and he had dementia. So, what's wierd about it is, a day or so before he died, he sat bolt up right, and looked intensely at us and smiled... then he lay back down in the fetal position, and carried on groaning and what-not. lol, I thought it was worth a mention!

reply to post by Gregandgemma



In response to your OP:

A family-member worked in an aged-care home many years ago, when we were both quite young. She was my first source of information about death and told me that many usually-cantankerous or depressed patients wore beatific smiles when discovered dead. Back then, death wasn't a topic of polite conversation and there were few if any books readily available, so what she said was a revelation.

She also told me, in awed tones, that some patients who'd lain basically unresponsive for weeks or even months, seemed to be happy and talking to 'invisible people', shortly before they died. This information was my first inkling, basically, that people didn't just 'stop living' in the manner of movie deaths. I was intrigued.

Decades later, at another function, I was introduced to a woman who'd apparently had a long career as a nurse. By this time, I'd read several books about death/dying and took the opportunity to ask if patients did see (and or were comforted by) deceased friends and family as their own death approached.

The nurse immediately brushed any such suggestion aside. She very coldly informed me in the most absolute of tones that she had never, in all her nursing experience, seen anything to support such a suggestion. Then with an odd smile, she took another drink and moved away. I've never known what to make of that woman. I nodded politely, but decided I didn't believe her .. basically because she appeared to me to derive satisfaction from what she'd said.

Approx. two years earlier, I'd received information from a source I considered to be much more genuine and reliable from an elderly neighbour. This woman had an extremely sharp mind, travelled widely and prided herself on her physical stamina. Although then approaching her 80's, she'd travelled alone to Santorini, for example, then on through Greece. A few months after her return, she took another lengthy tour: this time through England and Scotland and then on to the US. She did not suffer fools at all and was unfailingly practical and straightforward.

One day, in response to encouragement, she revealed that she'd chosen to nurse her husband at home, whenever possible, during the time he was dying of cancer. As it grew close to the end, she said, her husband had diminished almost to a shadow. Then, one day he'd awoken almost like his old self. He'd been chirpy, voice strong and wanted to be out of bed. He'd suggested the family (adult children and grandchildren) come over for the day and they'd all had a wonderful day together, during which my elderly neighbour's husband had remained energetic and active, playing with the children, helping with the bar-b-que, laughing and very much his old self.

Then, late in the afternoon, he'd suddenly become tired and my neighbour and her children helped him into the house and down the hallway to his room.

During the trip down the hall, the dying man had repeated two or three times with a fond smile, ' Come on, Mother Smith .. keep up, don't dawdle' -- and he'd looked behind him and down the hall as he said this.

Again, when he was in bed and surrounded by his family, the man had looked through the crush of bodies, saying, ' Come closer Mother, I can't see you back there behind the others. Come closer where I can see you.'

My neighbour said her husband died during the night. He'd had his 'last good day' she told me. I hadn't heard the term before, so she explained that according to folk wisdom, the dying are granted one final 'good day' before they die, during which they're happy and strong.

Then my neighbour told me that she believed her husband's mother, 'Mother Smith', had come to take her husband 'home' and had been there with the family in the hours before he died. My neighbour was convinced that her husband had seen his long-dead mother and this was why he'd jokingly called to her as they made their way down the hall and later, as the family gathered around his bed.

'Mother Smith' had been a tiny little woman, apparently, and due to damage to her legs, shuffled slowly. She had died in the Blitz in London in WW2, said my neighbour .. yet her son, in his dying hours, had seen her clearly and spoken naturally to her, in Australia, some 12,000 miles and fifty years later -- urging his tiny mother with her damaged legs to 'keep up' with the rest as they made their way down the hallway.

From personal experience....

My father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given 2 weeks to live. We brought him home where he stayed in our living room, and the nurse would stop by to check up daily. He was on heavy Morphine but still had a sharp mind. One night we were eating dinner in the kitchen (Next room), and heard him speaking full conversations with his mother (My grandmother), and his brother who had also died several years earlier. The next day he spoke with my older brother and by my brother's account apparently my father had asked my older brother what time it was by pointing to his wrist. My brother told him it was 11pm. My father grabbed my brothers hand and made 2 full circles with his finger around his watch. My brother wondered what it was? Well, the next night exactly 24 hours later my father died. Then we understood, he knew exactly when he was going to die, and how much time he had left. It still creeps me out to this day. This happened back in 1995.

On a side note, my father died a month before his 60th birthday would have been, he would have been the first person with our last name in our entire family line to have made his 60th birthday....

reply to post by TheWeepingWillow


Hey theweepingwillow.

Firstly welcome to ATS!

Secondly, thanks for sharing that experience and am not sure what to say in that no has lived to 60 years.

I am really starting to think that we are given a welcome to the afterlife. The more I have been read about all this, the less I am worried about the end. Bizzarely, I now feel a calm when watching/reading about death and also ghosts (which freaked me out only a few days ago).

I personally have not experienced anything of the nature but I post because my mother has mentioned a couple of events over the years which have stuck with me. The first is about my great grandmother who in her more advanced years would pray at night after everyone had gone to bed. However a few days / weeks (I am not exactly sure of the time frame - but will definately check) before her passing away, my mother who was only a young girl recalls constantly being woken up because of my great grandmother arguing with someone in her room and telling them to Go Away and that she did not want to go with them.

Before recounting the second incident, I should explain something so it does sound like another one of those 'a friend of a friend of a friend' stories. My mum grew up overseas around Kashmir in the Indian subcontinent. She lived in a traditional 'family home' where generations of people lived together. I am talking great grandparents, their brothers & wives, their kids and the kids own kids etch. So pretty much cousins aunties and uncles were more like brothers and sisters and everyone was very close. My mum tells me that in one night two of her cousin's were 'visited' by their sister in law's deceased mother in their dream. Both had the experience on the same night - although they slept in different parts of the house. Basically the deceased came to visit in a commuter bus and said that to 'get her daughter on the train and the mum would recieve her at her destination'. The next morning everyone was very preplexed and didnt know what to make of it. As it turns out that the woman who was supposed to be 'sent of the bus' was shortly diagnosed with a serious illness and passed away within a very very short time frame.

I know my mother better than anyone and these two experiences have made her into the deeply spiritual person she is today but would never imagine up these stories for sensationalism.

I posted this in another thread (and got the original link in yet another ats post).

This is a nursing website with hundreds of ghost stories, many of which discuss dying patients seeing their dead relatives before passing.

Fascinating stuff.

allnurses.com...

My husband's grandmother who is living with us and dying with dementia saw dead relatives yesterday. She hasn't spoken much in the past week. I was sitting with her yesterday and she told me that her father was there. I gently rubbed her. A few minutes later she asked me to make her veal (her fav. dish when she was ok). I told her that I didnt have any veal but how about some eggs. She then told me that vera said she didnt like eggs. Vera is her dead sister. A few minutes later she told me that her brother was there, I said oh his name is sparky right. She was looking across the room the whole time as if she was looking at something or someone. She said yeah sparky doesnt have any eyes. FYI- sparky was blind. I could feel the hair on my neck stand up, I felt that there were people with us. Mind you this lady hasnt been able to put words together in quite some time. After a little while she was looking to her right, she turned to me and said- the dog is with its master. I was completely shook up- 2 weeks ago we had to put our yellow lab to sleep. I dont know if the end is coming for her or not but wanted to share my story.