
What People Say Before They Die - lermontov
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/how-do-people-communicate-before-death/580303/
======
fatnoah
My father's last word was "Wow!". He was at the end stage of esophageal cancer
at the age of 46. He fought until about a week before his passing and made the
decision that he did all he could and try to go with some grace. By the point
the pain was constant and unbearable, even oxycontin wasn't getting the job
done. As a family, we said our goodbyes, and said everything that needed to be
said.

Over the course of the next few days, people from his life came from near and
far to visit him in the hospital. After about 5 days, the flow petered out.
The night he passed, he was in and out of lucidity, and in a clear moment we
talked about all of the people that came to see him. He was clearly impressed
and humble. At the end of the conversation, he exclaimed "Wow!" in a voice
that was barely a whisper and then closed his eyes. Several hours later, hid
body finally succumbed to the cancer and he exhaled his last breath.

~~~
rv-de
what do think he meant by that?

~~~
fatnoah
My interpretation was that he was expressing amazement at the number of people
that came to see him. Friends, relatives, co-workers from 15+ years ago, etc.
It was the topic we were discussing at that moment.

Of course, it may have been something else, too.

~~~
onetimemanytime
>> _Of course, it may have been something else, too._

Is it possible that the brain prepares us for a peaceful ending? Showing
paradise or whatever we like as we breath one last time?

~~~
hliyan
That would be comforting, but I can think of no evolutionary purpose for such
a mechanism to emerge...

~~~
blihp
In the event of a body's catastrophic system failure (i.e. serious injury /
dying) the brain spikes the endorphin levels since pain no longer serves a
useful purpose: the damage is done but it _does_ serve a useful purpose to
reduce the pain levels to allow us to function at a higher level than writhing
on the ground in agony so that in some circumstances we might live to see
another day.

Think of it this way: a bear just ripped/slashed/whatever your arm off...
which is more useful: 'arrgggghhh!' or for the brain to pump out endorphins so
that you at least concentrate and have a chance of fighting back or
running/limping away or hiding? I doubt the brain differentiates between
serious injury and dying, it's just wired at a certain point to try to
minimize the pain. That would seem to be a very useful evolutionary purpose.

~~~
cellularmitosis
And even if it did differentiate between serious injury and dying, considering
mankind’s history of warfare, being able to continue to perform while mortally
wounded is definitely beneficial to the survival of the clan.

------
ridgeguy
My mother-in-law died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease).

When she passed, my wife, her sister and her husband, and my mother-in-law's
ex-husband were with her. I was stroking her hair because I wanted the last
thing she felt to be a human touch.

At one moment, she said quite clearly, "I'm ready to get on the train". Not a
second or two later, we heard the train whistle (Palo Alto) as it passed the
stop near her home. And then she stopped breathing.

Coincidence, of course, but nonetheless lovely.

------
JohnJamesRambo
"Don't cry for me, for I go where music is born."

Who: Johann Sebastian Bach, Baroque composer.

Now that is how you go out in style.

~~~
andrepd
To put in context

"All music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the
recreation of the soul."

Bach believed that all music, secular as well as sacred, had to be inspired by
god or be written for his glory. Puts his last words into context :)

~~~
ianai
His family suffered badly after he died. His wife and mother of his children
died on the street begging for money. Really sullied my connection to his
music.

~~~
staplers
That was humanity's doing, not his music.

~~~
ianai
I’ve told myself that too but it’s small comfort. Really only highlights for
me that humanity owes itself better than it provides.

------
lurquer
I remember my Grandpa's last words on his deathbed: "Well, I'll see you'all
later."

~~~
LeftTurnSignal
The last thing I gave my Grandpa was a Get Well Soon card, at his funeral.

/everyone had a good laugh, he would have loved it.

~~~
drdeadringer
I've had the same thought from time to time. I stopped expressing them to my
parents; they don't share the points of view as your family, you, and myself
appears to.

------
JimBrimble35
I'll never forget my grandfather's last words (word really). Seconds before he
passed, he mustered up enough energy to call out "NO" quite loudly. Then he
was gone. I still find his last expression somewhat haunting, although I
suspect that the whole "dying" thing hadn't become real to him until that very
last moment when he knew it was inevitable.

------
cweagans
I saw my grandpa the night before he passed. I asked him if he wanted my wife
and I to stay or go and let him sleep. His last words to me were "Just let me
sleep".

~~~
dominotw
Classic granpa move.

------
Ice_cream_suit
"On a winter morning in 1360, Zen master Kozan Ichikyo gathered together his
pupils. Kozan, 77, told them that, upon his death, they should bury his body,
perform no ceremony and hold no services in his memory. Sitting in the
traditional Zen posture, he then wrote the following:

Empty-handed I entered the world Barefoot I leave it. My coming, my going —
Two simple happenings That got entangled.

After he finished, Kozan gently put down his brush, and then died. He was
still sitting upright.

"
[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/07/02/books/black-...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/07/02/books/black-
illumination-zen-poetry-death/)

~~~
skilled
Here we are, Western mortals worrying about the last spoken word, while the
Himalayan yogis exit their body consciously...

------
mjfl
I'm a little bit different - I don't want to prepare for death. I want to die
at my desk, completely unconscious of, unready for and ultimately, unburdened
by my own mortality. There's nothing you can do about it anyways, and waiting
to die is boring and miserable. I don't want to give death any respect, I want
to be inconvenienced by it, interrupted by it.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Sadly, you are unlikely to get much choice in the matter.

~~~
mjfl
What I'm saying is that I'm against the alternative which is to prepare for
death like it's this big day or something.

------
ryandvm
I still think "Fuck that alligator" is my favorite:

[http://gawker.com/fuck-that-alligator-man-killed-seconds-
aft...](http://gawker.com/fuck-that-alligator-man-killed-seconds-after-
mocking-1715887134)

~~~
vatueil
BuzzFeed later published a more detailed and sympathetic account of this
tragedy: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/golianopoulos/fuck-that-
gat...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/golianopoulos/fuck-that-gator)

~~~
darkpuma
It really steams me that they killed the gator. The gator didn't do anything
wrong, and considering that it was the first lethal gator attack in the state
in two centuries, the gator almost certainly did not represent a significant
hazard to any other people, almost all of whom would be more respectful of it.
Suggesting that there was something wrong with the gator, like it had a moral
deficiency or something, is just absurd.

~~~
olalonde
The justification I've often heard has nothing to do with morality or
vengeance. It's simply that animals that have killed humans tend to do it
again because they now associate humans with prey. I don't know how accurate
this is but it's definitely the rationale used for killing such animals.

------
fierro
interestingly, Texas keeps a record of the last statements made by death row
inmates uttered before execution. I'm not sure if other states do this.

[https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.h...](https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.html)

~~~
dralley
Wow
[https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/rodriguezrosend...](https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/rodriguezrosendolast.html)

~~~
Ice_cream_suit
Those were his words.

These were his deeds :
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosendo_Rodriguez](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosendo_Rodriguez)

------
acjohnson55
So uncomfortable to read. We all like to pretend that death's not a thing
until it becomes unavoidable. I think the mentality of a human being is built
to be deeply anxious of the possibility of changes in circumstance, yet
adaptable when possibilities become certainty. Everyone I know who has faced
life-altering circumstances eventually adopts a new life. I suppose those
terminal are the same. A lot of shit probably just doesn't matter anymore,
because it can't.

------
zw123456
My Mom was in hospice care for about the last year of her life. She was
religious and I am not, I am an Atheist. We talked about that toward the end.
We came up with a very unique "pass phrase" and she agreed that if she got "up
there" she would try to get it to me. That was 10 years ago, still nothing.

But I thought it was interesting that part of the way I think she dealt with
it was writing her Eulogy. She had been the organist at her church for many
years until she became too ill to continue. She had a friendly little rivalry
with her much younger replacement playing little practical jokes on her like
leaving a funny cartoon in the hymn book to "throw her off timing", silly fun
things like that.

My Mom had been placing this idea with the church goers for some time,
claiming that our family had Native American Heritage (we do not).

When I attended her funeral, many members of the church mentioned this and my
sister and I just assumed maybe she was confused towards the end. But she was
not confused at all. It was all part of an elaborate, one last practical joke
from the grave.

She had convinced the church to allow the organist to perform a "Native
American Chant" in her honor. The Chant was "O-what-ajerkiam" over and over
but in native sounding phonology she had devised. She had even provided the
poor unsuspecting organist an "official native American drum". (this whole
thing shamelessly stolen from Mel Brooks). The ruse went off perfectly and my
sister and I were cracking up, Mel Brooks was her favorite.

I hope I have a great sense of humor like my Mom at the end like that. It was
her completely. And everyone got a huge kick out of it afterwards including
the organist who was in tears of laughter after she realized she had been had
one last time.

~~~
xamuel
>We came up with a very unique "pass phrase" and she agreed that if she got
"up there" she would try to get it to me

This sort of thing is addressed in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in
Luke 16. An excerpt:

"'Then I beg you, father,' he [a rich man in hell] said, 'send Lazarus [a
beggar in heaven] to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn
them so they will not also end up in this place of torment.'

But Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let your brothers
listen to them.'

'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone is sent to them from the dead,
they will repent.'

Then Abraham said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets,
they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.'" (Luke
16:27-31)

~~~
paulryanrogers
> This sort of thing is addressed in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man
> in Luke 16

IMO that passage only addresses it in so far as to make up an excuse to
explain the silence. If even a modest amount of the supernatural claims in the
Christian Bible are true then at least one of them should be reliably
repeatable. And despite years wasted looking I'm not convinced.

~~~
xamuel
>If even a modest amount of the supernatural claims in the Christian Bible are
true then at least one of them should be reliably repeatable

If it were reliably repeatable, it wouldn't be supernatural. That's
tautological.

~~~
ASalazarMX
OK, just keep doing different miracles each time. Keep it fresh.

~~~
xamuel
What you're getting at is actually a profound paradox in philosophy of
science: the statement "no miracles occur" is itself unfalsifiable, and thus
(at least in the Popperian sense) not scientific. It's unfalsifiable because
to repeatably falsify it would be tantamount to repeatably producing miracles!

Here's an interesting paper on the subject:
[https://philpapers.org/archive/FROTNA-2.doc](https://philpapers.org/archive/FROTNA-2.doc)
(Greg Frost-Arnold, 2010, "The No‐Miracles Argument for Realism: Inference to
an Unacceptable Explanation", Philosophy of Science 77(1))

~~~
solipsism
What an incredible display of navel gazing (the paper you link). I'm well
aware that modern science was born from philosophy, but much of what is left
in the realm of philosophy seems to me so incredibly useless.

Logic, reason, critical thinking, ethics, these are all valuable things. But
anti-realism? I challenge anyone to tell me something useful that has come
from the study of "anti-realism".

Not that everything has to be useful. Far be it from me to try to control
anyone's hobby. But I, for one, don't want any of my tax dollars to go toward
supporting that fruitless pasttime.

~~~
xamuel
It's too early to expect real-world applications of anti-realism. Instead I
would redirect your attention to a similar pattern in the foundations of
mathematics.

Mathematical foundations were once very shaky, but real-world mathematicians
didn't care in practice. Bertrand Russell showed that an early mathematical
foundation attempt was inconsistent. At the time, to a working mathematician,
this would have been about as airy-fairy as anti-realism seems to us today. A
mathematician back then could well and rightly have said: "Proofs, equations,
solutions, these are valuable things. But Russell's paradox? I challenge
anyone to tell me something useful that has come from the study of Russell's
paradox." Indeed, the paradox was actually known to Zermelo before Russell,
and Zermelo didn't consider it important enough to make a fuss about!

Now in hindsight, we know that foundational work DID pay off in practical
ways. It was a crucial step toward the development of, for example, automated
proof verification software like COQ, which has extremely important real-world
applications and whose importance will only grow in the future.

Here's my speculation: things like anti-realism are equivalent to Russell's
Paradoxes which seem like navel-gazing today. In a hundred years' time, they
might have proven to be a crucial step toward formal science verification
software. Just like fixing mathematical foundations was a crucial step toward
formal mathematical verification software.

------
yodsanklai
Before my mother died (from lung cancer), she was just extremely anxious and
miserable. Don't expect some kind of revelation or great thought about the
meaning of life when people die. It's just horrible for everybody involved.

------
ca98am79
My grandfather was saying "help!" through an oxygen mask on his face for
several days before he died. I didn't know how to respond because there wasn't
anything we could do. He struggled like this, in pain, but at the very end he
had an expression of complete joy and peace that was really moving to me. I
was very close with my grandfather and felt I could understand what he was
feeling without any words. My interpretation is that he experienced some type
of complete acceptance of death and/or awareness of something beyond death. It
was really beautiful and comforting to see, especially after watching him
struggle for days prior to this.

------
abetusk
For those that want a list, Wikiquote has a page of "last words" [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Last_words](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Last_words)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
"Thomas Jefferson survives."

~~~
paulmd
Narrator: "He didn't."

------
c3534l
Before Einstein died he called his live-in nurse over to hear his last words.
Unfortunately she didn't speak German. So we don't know if he uttered a
breakthrough physics formula or just complimented her on a nice set of cans.

Anyway, fascinating article even though we all seem to want to talk about
famous last words instead.

------
yakshaving_jgt
> Zagraj w Mozarta na moją pamiątkę, a ja cię usłyszę.

— Frederic Chopin

This one is my favourite.

~~~
owlninja
Translation: Play Mozart in memory of me—and I will hear you.

~~~
acjohnson55
Mine might just be "Play Chopin in memory of me".

~~~
oconnor663
Ironically those were Mozart's last words.

------
adamc
The book is actually "Words at the Threshhold", not "on" the threshhold...
[https://www.amazon.com/Words-Threshold-What-Nearing-
Death/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Words-Threshold-What-Nearing-
Death/dp/1608684601/)

------
tokyodude
not sure this is relevant but my grandmother's last words to me...

she was the always happy type of person. super socialite knows everyone and
everyone loves her always a kind word for everyone.

The last time I saw her was the only time I ever heard her have a negative
attitude about anything.

She said "getting old sucks!"

------
mirimir
William S. Burroughs: "Hurry up, please. It's time."

And OK, those weren't his last words. They were the last words in his last
book, _The Western Lands_. Maybe they were more about being ready for death.

His final journal entries were published as _Last Words: The Final Journals_.
My favorite:

> Here I sit with my three old cats, getting closer to eternity all the time,
> on a twine chair—(Van Gogh) and me too—and it gets very depressing. What can
> I do? I had high hopes. We all did. Remember just outside the Tangier
> Consulate: “Have you met the Skipper yet?” Later I did. And now no skipping,
> no transport anywhere, except to a cut-rate mortuary. Where were you when I
> wasn’t there? “Hound of Hell!!” screamed the Pop Star, and kicked the fink
> dog in the nuts. “Only decent thing I done.” “Forget the whole thing. I
> have.” Great gasp at this point. How much time? have I left? Not much it
> seems.”

~~~
neonate
[https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/section3/](https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/section3/)

~~~
mirimir
Thanks. And yes, Burroughs didn't bother much with attribution.

------
Gatsky
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann)

The section about his death is surprising. I was an atheist at the time I
first encountered the story.

~~~
aaaaaaaaaab
What made you change your mind?

------
spdustin
When I was a child, my family and I drove from Florida to New York to say
goodbye to my dying grandfather, wasting away from cancer. Ours was the only
group now already in New York. He was unconscious for the first 24 hours we
were there.

The day after we got there, he woke up. He wasn’t able to see, and he asked my
grandmother, “is everyone here, Mother?”

“Yes, George, they are.”

“So I can go now?”

Through tears, she said, “yes, you can go now.”

He took one more breath.

------
lumberingjack
cancer/bleeding out/religious martyr Grandma "I can feel his warm light on my
body!"

cancer/coma Grandpa "I am sorry for all the things I did (as a Nazi)we where
just fighting for our rights and lives."

cancer/coma Grandpa 2 "Y'all talk to much." joking

cancer/coma Cousin 1 "I fought as long as I can don't cry it's all cool"

sleeping pills/instant Cousin 2 "Fuck this world and fuck you're gods" heard
over the internet

old age 102/stopped breathing Great grandma "(I have seen a lot of stuff) I'll
tell you more tomorrow right now I'm tired."

------
reaperducer
"I drank what?" — Socrates

------
starpilot
"What happens after I kick this bucket?"

------
martin1975
Or maybe he saw the truth about God. Steve Jobs said "oh wow, oh wow, oh wow"
too. Could be one for each, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

~~~
gnulinux
Or maybe one for each, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades.

~~~
martin1975
Well.. it's either/or. Both can't be true.

~~~
vntok
Zeus, Poseidon and Hades are siblings. Of course both could be true.

------
Simulacra
“ hold my beer and watch this”

~~~
nkkollaw
HN doesn't like jokes. Too Reddit-like.

~~~
nkrisc
I think the bar's just higher.

~~~
vntok
No, that's not it.

------
W-Stool
"Rosebud".

------
gammateam
I like how this article and research de-romanticizes dying words.

There is nothing romantic about it, just incoherence that can only sometimes
be applied out of context to conform to a blissful end.

~~~
pugworthy
I’m curious if you’ve ever sat with a dying person.

~~~
gammateam
Yes, I have

So logically the next thing you have to do is to question whether I’ve sat
with enough and kept a spreadsheet to elevate my experience away from an
anecdotal outlier

