To ask if your loved ones have known when they would die?

[TimeToSay]

Just that really.

A relative of mine has been terminally ill for a while. They are on end of life hospice care.

Today they spent the day trying their hardest to get messages to everyone to thank them, tell us they love us.

I can't help but think somehow they "know" and maybe when I said goodbye just now that was it.

If so I'm at peace with it. As it's been lovely to have that experience and they need to escape the pain they've been in so long.

So would like to hear your experiences please. I sort of don't want to prepare myself as much as I feel I am if it could be a few more days for them.

My dad (81) went into hospital last September after suffering a heart attack. He ended up going into respite care in a home and I wasn't allowed to see him in either. I called him a few days before and he told me he loved me. He's always been the cuddle type but not one for saying he loves me just like that. He died a few days later. Before that he was avoiding speaking to my mum a bit and getting upset when he did speak to her and I think he knew he didn't have long left.

My forever 10 year old son told me 2 nights before he died "I'm so tired and I don't know where to go". I told him he had to go when he was ready and he did.

My Dad knew he was dying before we did. He reminded my mum of certain financial things and gave some good advice to us kids individually. He was unwell but we didn't think he would die. He passed a week later.

My mum had a brain tumour and alzheimers, and we had to stop Dr's telling her it was terminal, as every time they did, it was brand new information for her, and was devastating. The night before she died(she'd been having a good day, enjoyed the harvest festival and had been in good spirits) she said to her nurse that she was going to die that night. She just seemed to know

I'm pretty sure we have some of the same instincts that make animals go off to die somewhere quiet and safe. It depends though - in cases with infections or pain requiring a syringe driver in our family they weren't particularly lucid in their last few days.

My uncle, who died of pancreatic cancer in his mid 70s, got up from his bed, had a shower and announced that that day would be the day. Incredibly it was true.

My father gave a speech to his favourite child in the hospice very late at night telling him loads of stuff (he was more or less silent for the other 3 of us who saw him earlier in the day) and died before noon the following day.

I think people often know.

My grandad died early last year before lockdown. He was never on his death bed or anything. He had health problems and recently diagnosed with non aggressive cancer, heart problems too but was living a relatively normal life at home albeit very tired. So his death was deemed sudden.

I can't put my finger on it. We popped round as usual 2 days before. He was very quiet but he was very insistent on giving us hugs and kisses when we left. He then insisted on giving my young kids his great grandkids extra kisses. DS had ran off into the garden as we are leaving and he insisted that he come back for a kiss. My grandad was not the type of man who would demand kisses or anything or Ds to come back but it felt like that he just felt like he needed to that day! It breaks my heart because I am not much of a hugger but if I knew that 2 days later he'd be gone, I would have hugged him so hard and told him I loved him deerly 😪

To add, I felt like he knew that this could be the last time he saw us but he couldn't tell us he felt that way!

O my goodness! Muddlingthroughlife that has made me well up. What a good supportive parent you are. Sending you virtual hugs.

Ditto, muddling. Now I’m crying. So sorry for your loss. 💐

I'm sure my Dad knew. He said he wasn't getting better and he 'had to get on with it'. He died that night.

My DM had pancreatic cancer, was on a syringe driver and had barely said a word in 3-4 days. I visited the hospice on the Monday with siblings and when I had a minute alone with her, gave her hand a squeeze and told her I loved her. She sat up, hugged me and said “I’ll always love you more.” She didn’t say another word and died 2 days later. My DDad said he felt she was saying good bye to me and she knew.

Oh Muddling that is so sad, sincerest condolences to you. Not remotely comparable but My nana said something similar to me. She wasn't ill, had a bit of a fluey thing, and we called in. My uncle's wife who used to drive her mad was there and at one stage she leaned her head against my arm and said "xxxx I'm just very tired". That was the Sunday and she passed on the Wednesday. I think she knew and was already gone in some ways. Her eyes were always so twinkly but that night she looked at us as if we were strangers and she was sharp as a tack til the end. I do think a lot of people know.

My dgm knew because she asked the Dr.. She had been in ICU after an aortic aneurysm and her lungs had turned to paper...
Very sad...

My DF didn’t know he just got weaker and weaker and slept more and more then drifted off peacefully - he was a few weeks away from his 94th birthday
It was time for him to go and we’d had plenty of time to say goodbye as he’d had a stroke the year before
For months afterwards though I could still feel the last kiss he gave me it was so vivid a memory

I think my grandma knew. She cancelled all her direct debits and her pension then had her phone line cut. She was ready I think . She’d always had a bad heart but it was liveable with . She also said her goodbyes and passed 2 days later.

I think some do know..
My dad always said he would never live past 40 (this is also documented online as he was a designer for a famous store in the '70s)
He decided to stay with his sister one weekend, aged 36, he wrote a letter to my mother (and included photos of my brother and i) as they didnt live together then.. he died in bed at his sisters the next morning of a sudden heart attack.
The weird thing is, 2 years ago my brother got chatting to a man at my aunts funeral, who turned out to the be the policeman first on the scene at my dads bedside. He said to this day it was the strangest thing he'd ever witnessed..

I remember years ago, when my grandad was ill in hospital with kidney failure, he was dozy and sleepy and not really there for ages - weeks and weeks. Semi aware that we visited, but not really. Then one day as I was leaving to go home, I said 'bye grandad' and he looked right at me and there was this moment of feeling of total clarity that he SAW me properly for the first time in ages. He said 'goodbye sweetheart' and I went home (I was about 17). My mum stayed a bit longer and was helping him eat. She says he looked at her and said 'I've had enough now'. She asked if he meant that he'd had enough to eat. He just looked right at her and said 'I've had enough.' She left not long after, and he died that night.

Yes, my late husband knew and I knew.

Something in his voice changed and this feeling just came over me and I said to him quietly as we were sitting on the sofa, you're dying aren't you. And he replied, yes, I am. I'm tired and don't want to fight anymore.
He fought cancer so very hard.
I said, ok. He asked me to promise I'd be ok and to take care of the kids and not to forget him. I promised.

I called the hospice nurse to come out.
She dosed him up with more morphine.
We all got in bed with him, kids, grandson, dog and turned on Rocky.
We all fell asleep and when I woke up he was gone.

Both my grandma and grandpa. My grandma had been slowly dying of cancer at home, I happened to live with them. I'd avoided going to her room aa much as possible as I couldn't deal with seeing her. One night I felt the urge to say good night to her so I went in to see her. Because of various things, she hadn't spoken for days, but she told me she loved me that night. I went to bed and woke up at 7am on the dot the next morning and ran out my room to hers, it was the exact moment she took her last breath.
Many years later, my grandpa (her husband) was old and in a home. We often visited but he couldn't always remember who was who or when he'd last seen us. We went one afternoon, I went to give him a kiss hello and he grabbed my hand and held it the whole time we were there, he didn't usually do that and when we left, he raised my hand and kissed it before saying goodbye. He died the next morning.

My perfectly healthy for 86 great-aunt rang several family members one Friday and asked them to visit her that weekend as she'd be dying on Tuesday. They told her not to be silly and said they'd visit the following weekend instead.

But sure enough, on Tuesday she died.

I wonder if we know some of these things on a subconscious level. My dad and I were going to go to the proms, we often did but this year I couldn't be arsed and didn't really want to, I no longer lived at home and it was a trek on a train to go home. Then a thought popped in my head like, better go it might be the last time, which was daft as he was early 50s not ill or anything, I'd seen him a month or so before, no reason to think it'd be our last time. Turns out it was our last day out together, a month later he went to hospital with stomach pains, he never came home again and was dead in 3 months...

On his last day mum said he was really agitated about unfinished business, about us children being young (one sibling a child), but the doctors had told her there was nothing to be done so she told him it was ok to go. He waited til all us kids left and DM was sitting talking to the nurse about their early days together and then he'd gone

I never kissed my mum, we didn’t have that type of relationship, but we were very close.
She was in ICU but wasn’t expected to die.
As I left she puckered up for a kiss and said she loved me.
Next time I saw her she was unconscious and then died.

I visited my Dad on a Saturday and he told me that he was going to die on Tuesday. I said "You'd better not, it's my birthday, had you forgotten?". He laughed and said "Oh, I'd better wait a bit then". He had a cardiac arrest mid conversation and died on the Wednesday.

My grandma had been threatening to die for years - it was one of her favourite conversation topics. The night she actually died, I visited her in hospital (a routine infection, was supposed to be out in a couple of days) and she just said "I won't be seeing you again, so you look after yourself". I laughed and told her she'd been predicting her own death for 30 years so I wasn't going to believe her now. She looked very serious and calmly said "Oh, no, this is it for me now. Goodnight, darling". Choked me up a bit, but I had to leave - and the nurses had said she was on her way home soon - so I gave her a kiss and a squeeze and went home.

A few hours later she took a massive turn from the worst, had a heart attack and died. She definitely knew.