AIBU to think that unusual things happen when someone is dying?

[Jelly4444]

Just to brighten up everyone's day...🤣

I'm not a big believer in religion, the paranormal or an afterlife but I do believe that unusual things happen when someone is dying.

When my grandmother was dying we saw a bright light raise up from behind her house and float in the sky for a few mins (irish countryside, halfway up a mountain!). We couldn't work out what it was. We all agreed that none of us were afraid and that we felt calmer after seeing it.

When my father was dying in hospital there was an overwhelming smell of beautiful flowers in the room. When I try to remember it now I believe it was freesias. I even gave my father a hug and a sniff to work out if the smell was from him . Only my sister and I could smell it but a nurse came in at one point and she remarked on the smell of flowers too. My father was convinced his mother in the room. He also thought that there was a young girl there too. He had a sister who died before he was born.

When my grandfather died suddenly (he was ill but we didn't expect it) we saw lights in the sky again.

When my other grandmother was dying she thought that there was crows in the room which was scary to say the least!!

I've been around other relatives when they were dying but didn't notice anything unusual. I would love to hear other people's experiences... or if you think its all nonsense!

AIBU to think that strange things happen when people are dying or is it just our minds playing tricks on us?

When my DF died last year, DD2 was only 6 weeks old. She smiled for the first time. I obviously got excited about it, and received a call a couple of minutes later to say he passed, at what would have been the moment she smiled.

I was at my dads bedside when he died of lung cancer. He had been barely conscious for a few days, no speaking, just a very deep sleep with all the morphine. Just seconds before he died he opened his eyes and said ‘mum’. It brought me a lot of comfort to think that my gran had been there to meet him to take him to the ‘other side’.

My granny also had an hour of incredible clarity and gave a grand speech to us all about having had a good life and good friends and that she wasn’t afraid to die. She also told us to stick together and no falling out.

She was comforting me like she did when I was little, like she was in good health again and we were watching the death of someone else.

I remember her asking me not to cry for her and saying “come on lass it will all be ok”
This all from a woman who had drifted in and out of consciousness for a week!

This happened after death. When my grandfather died, my mother was standing with all the mourners at the grave. It was in Ireland, so probably not something someone would be familiar with here. It was a lovely spring morning, not warm but average for the time of year.

Just after they lowered the coffin into the ground, one of the mourners said “shame there’s no snow” as snow on the coffin signified the departed had gone to heaven. Almost immediately she said it there was one fall of snow that covered the coffin white. My mum knew then that her beloveded father had gone home to heaven..

We used to live as tenants in a farmhouse and were quite close to the farmer who was our landlord and our neighbour down the track. He was very old and had lived on the farm most of his life (he was a proper character too - couldn't read or write, had an old fashioned Kentish farmer accent, which you don't really hear anymore, had thousands of cats etc!) and he'd planted some cherry trees in the field behind our house many years ago. The night he died, the tree nearest our garden split into 3 at the trunk... We were shocked when we saw it in the morning but we were totally FREAKED when we heard later that day that the farmer had died in the night!

Another one was the weeks leading up to my lovely mums passing. She was quite senile in her final years and barely recognised us. But quite a few times she would tell me that she kept seeing her late mother. She was so vague and confused about everything else but she was so insistent and clear about this. I’m certain that my grandmother was waiting for her.

I've seen the clarity thing so many times as a nurse. The patient's family would often ask if it meant the were getting better, and I'd suggest they just took the time to enjoy the day. It feels like a little gift to the terminally ill.

When DH's nan had a good day (on Boxing day) I took him to one side and told him very clearly that WHEN she stopped being OK to tell me to go for a walk and not say anything else - as I'd have to resuscitate her and I'm freaking awesome at it (lots of practice). After I've gone they could flap and call and ambulance - she had a DNR but she was out of area for Xmas and had no paper work with her. DH sighed and knew what I was talking about.

She died the next day when I wasn't there. DH made sure to say goodbye to her when we left.

I also very much believe in giving people permission to go. Sometimes I think the terminally ill hang on. A wife of one patient asked me why he was going on so long. I asked if she'd told him it was OK to go. She did (very sweetly, it broke my heart a little) and he went less than a minute later. I did the same to my grandfather who was Cheyne-Stoking for over an hour and I didn't want my DF to see it. I told him to go and I'd make sure everyone was OK, and he stopped after a couple more breaths. Maybe coincidence, but really maybe not.

I agree.
I was playing netball the night my FIL died suddenly. The timing clock on the wall stopped at the exact time that I later learnt he had died.
Very spooky I thought.
I don’t think anything happened when my own dad died but it was also a Thursday. I now dread every Thursday because bad things generally happen on Thursdays in my experience.

This is very outing but...my family always associate daisies with my grandmother because of the song, Daisy Daisy. On the day of her funeral I went into my garden and there were three daisies in the grass (for me, my mum and sister?). I never had daisies in my garden before and never did again. I lived there 20yrs. I picked the three flowers and took them to the funeral with me. The following Christmas I bought each of us a ring with a daisy on. They vanished before I could gift them. On the anniversary of my grandmother's death the following summer, the three rings were on the floor of my dressing room that morning when I got up.

Haven’t read all the thread but it has made me cry. So scary all of this - life and the suffering we have to go through.

The six year old boy comforting his Mum telling her he was having good dreams .

For most of my ex colleagues in care we are used to strange happenings and it isn't a big deal. We don't really talk about it. The most hardened cold care staff simply accept odd things happen. The rallying before death is incredibly common and honestly it can serve as a touch stone to add staff into the room so they don't risk being left alone when they go. To be honest the "it's all nonsense " brigade are firmly viewed as arrogant idiots (quietly and politely of course but they are seen as newbies a d probably inexperienced in end of life) .

Everyone has their stories , clocks stopped in a residents room the day before at the time they go the next day, knowledge before hand if they are lucid of when it will be, many many waiting for someone to arrive, electronics behaving oddly. It's not really in my experience seen as woo more that it just is. It happens. If you are on what you expect to be the final watch , you don't after a while get surprised at glasses falling over ,footsteps etc. It just is.

My DP specialised in end of care for a long time . He is the most cynical sceptic in general life you could meet. But in that room at the end he has his stories , and they just are. He doesn't analyse them , he is also not stupid enough to question them.

I don’t believe in anything. But explain how my Grandpapa manages to pass away to coincide with the ending of his mother in law (who he hated) wake. Bang on 5pm, he dies, with my Grandmamma surrounded by her friends and family. She receives a call from the hospital and the immediate family follow to be told he had passed away peacefully a few minutes before we could get there.
He was the type of larger than life character who always had a joke and a game up his sleeve, so I honestly believe he “chose” to die on the day it would cause my Grandmama least stress as her family were around her, and my Great-Grandmother the most amount of pain, as she would no longer be the centre of attention. (Albeit a dead centre of attention)
It’s extremely odd that it happened like that, but there you have it.
Since he passed away, my children talk constantly to him, my oldest claims to see him at nighttime when he’s stressed about something, the littlest has been known to sit upright in his bed, have a full conversation with someone who isn’t there and then go back to sleep. When he is asked about it the next day, my grandpapas name is always mentioned.
We get a lot of white butterflies and feathers that appear out of nowhere (very urban surroundings, no reason for them) and just last week I had a white butterfly alight on my diary (where I keep track of appointments) and suddenly I had phonecall after phonecall of people wanting appointments, so my business is saved.
It’s weird.

My grandma died years ago while I was at uni in London (I’m a northerner) I knew she was ill and I knew it was bad but mum and dad had nothing said don’t come home until the weekend. On my train ride home I suddenly felt like I was being watched, not in a creepy way I just felt very warm and loved.
When I got home my parents told me she had died as I was on my way home. I firmly believe she came to the train I was on because I’d not got to her in time.

Two other odd things;
The rest of my family was with her when she died, my sister left the room for a minute and it wasn’t until she went back in that my grandma passed. Mum swears she thought I’d arrived because they’d told her I was coming.
The night she died my sister says she woke up to see her stood at the foot of her bed. She hid under the covers and when she looked again she had gone.

My Granny always used to say 'one in, one out' when somebody died. I fell pregnant 2 months after she passed away. And gave birth to a daughter. Weirdly, 20 years earlier, i fell pregnant 2 months after my other Granny passed away. I didn't continue with that pregnancy as I was very young at the time.

I’m of Irish stock, so brace yourselves! When my cousins’ grandmother was ill, my mother, father and cousins all heard continual wailing and sobbing outside their rural house throughout the night.
They became concerned a person or animal had been hit by a car on the road, so went up and down with torches, finding nothing. The keening continued until dawn, abruptly stopping when they received a call to say the grandmother had died.
They all, in varying degrees, believed that what they had heard was a banshee. Banshees are said to follow families with the most ancient Celtic lineages, those whose names begin with 'O', just as the surname my cousins’ shared with their grandmother did.

I was with my mum and maternal grandmother when they died.

Mum was 1st to go and she was in and out of consciousness for days. She was naming family members who had died, I particular her 3 brothers. I found that comforting and they were there for her.

5 years later nan passed and she called out my mum’s name, my God that was heartbreaking for me.

Unless you have sat with a person who has passed, i dont think anyone is in a position to say its bollocks.

I'm not religious or spiritual. However, when my gran died she sat up in bed suddenly, reached out and said the light, the light. Then she died.

I'm starting to think this OP. My sister is nearing the end now. I was talking with my mum earlier about arrangements for her funeral and my mum was talking about she likes sunflowers.

We have sunflowers growing in the back garden, DH planted them at the start of lockdown and they're all flowering nicely now. They're in plant pots and one keeps falling over. As I was talking to my mum, DH noticed it had fallen over and snapped. So he cut the flower off and brought it into the house. I don't know why it means so much to me, but I took it as a sign.

Thecatswhiskers, feeling warm and loved describes my experience at the time of my dad's death very well.

Oh I've remembered another one. Just before my mum's mum died, I had moved house. I was convinced that house was haunted when we moved in although I eventually with time realised it was the adjoining house had a very badly insulated loft conversion and we heard everything in their house! I was so spooked out and probably stressed from moving, I kept having those horrible dreams where you dream about waking up but you can't move etc. And I dreamed about this old lady in my house. She turned into my mum's mum and I remember saying in my dream that couldn't be my granny because my granny was dead. My dad's mum WAS dead, but it was definitely my other granny, who was still alive at that point in my crazy dream. My mum's mum passed away a few days later.

Such an interesting topic.

I remember sitting in my English lesson, age 15. It was not long after dinner & my teacher came to talk to me. My mum was in hospital at the time & I broke down in tears, suddenly feeling so empty & sad, but I couldn’t explain it then. Anyway, English ended, & off I trotted to my next lesson. I was like a different person altogether...happy, laughing... When I got home, my dad broke the news that my mum had died a few hours earlier. I look at this as though my sadness was felt due to her passing, & the joy was her being met by her mum & dad in heaven. I will never forget that day.

I was with my grandma when she died. She’d not been conscious for a few days. Suddenly she opened her eyes, turned her head and looked at a point just behind me and gave the most beautiful happy smile. Then she closed her eyes and breathed her last breaths.

I feel privileged to have been there with her, and it was a great comfort.

It was a joke that my dad always said he didn’t want any solemn, slow music at his funeral (he was always dashing here and there and worked so hard when we were young). He wanted “the Flight of the Bumble Bee”. We made sure that was played at the end of the service. When we got outside my dh pointed out the very big bumble bee buzzing around his flowers.
When my Aunty was living alone in a very quiet place in rural Wales she was woken up by a banging on the door. She got out of bed to find out what was happening. There was no sign of anybody. The next day she had a telephone call from her eldest son to tell her that his brother had died in Germany. He had died in the night at about the time she heard the knocking.

Also - a week before my grandma died she told my mum and me that recently when she woke up in the morning her mum was sitting at the end of her bed. My grandma was tired but well at that point, we had no reason to expect her to die soon, but as soon as she said that my mum and I looked at each other, and we knew her time was coming.

My mum asked her how it made her feel, I can’t remember what she said but it was happy or comforted.