Readers share stories of their loved one’s demise and wonder about the best way for themselves to go. If you’d like to join the discussion, drop us a note at hello@theatlantic.com.
Jennie Dear has an evocative piece for us examining the scant evidence that scientists have so far about the mysterious threshold between life and death—what the body goes through and how a person subjectively feels it, both in terms of pain and hallucinations:
“A lot of cardiac-arrest survivors describe that during their unconscious period, they have this amazing experience in their brain,” [neuroscientist Jimo Borjigin] says. “They see lights and then they describe the experience as ‘realer than real.’” She realized the sudden release of neurochemicals might help to explain this feeling. … Most of the patients interviewed [for a study at a hospice center], 88 percent, had at least one dream or vision.
One reader says of Dear’s ostensibly morbid piece (“What It Feels Like to Die”): “The article is comforting in a way I did not anticipate.” Another reader agrees:
I kissed my dad goodbye on the forehead right before he died. He smiled briefly. So, this article was some comfort in maybe explaining that smile of his.
This next reader also lost her father:
I remember when my dad was dying, and my mom forbade any of us from telling him that he was dying. I thought that that was terribly selfish on her part, and I told my husband that if I were dying I would want to know.
When my mom passed away, she was “treated” to the experience of my sisters bitterly arguing as to who was the favorite. (I knew I wasn’t and just held her hand.) My husband got my sisters to stop. Finally, the doctors came in and actually said she had permission to die ... Mom was like that; you had to have permission in her mind for everything.
My dear husband is gone now, and I just hope that when I go, I’ll be thinking of him.
That reader’s line—“if I were dying I would want to know”—prompted a question in my mind I’ve long answered in the affirmative: “Do you want to be awake for your death and know it’s coming?” The conventional wisdom says most people prefer to die in their sleep, but, as long as there’s no intense pain involved, sleeping seems like a disappointing way to experience one of the most profound parts of life—its ending. And whenever I think of that question, I’m reminded of these lyrics from Björk’s “Hyperballad”:
I imagine what my body would sound like
Slamming against those rocks
And when it lands
Will my eyes be closed or open?
Would you rather be sleep or awake? How exactly would you prefer to die? What’s the ideal situation? Email hello@theatlantic.com if you’d like to share.
Back to a few more stories from readers regarding the death of a loved one. This memory is particularly poignant:
Twelve months ago, my 33-year-old daughter Phoebe began to die from metastatic melanoma. Over the next 10 weeks at a hospital in Melbourne, she went through each of the experiences outlined in Jennie Dear’s article. During this time, Phoebe asked her nurse how would she know when she was about to actually die. Donna told her that something would happen and she would know—both vague and oddly specific, but Phoebe was satisfied.
A week before her death, having gotten her pain under control, Phoebe was at home to say goodbye to her animals, clean out her cupboards, and give away her possessions. She was standing in the yard throwing a ball for the dog when she suddenly sat down, as I watched from the kitchen. I’m sure she realized as she collapsed to the bench that her time had come. I doubt that there could be a lonelier moment in a person’s life.
She didn’t speak again. Her hearing and hand gestures reduced over a few days to squeezing, then nothing but breathing quietly. Her brother-in-law, who was with her at the end, said she simply stopped breathing.
Each person’s death is different, so I found Dear’s article comforting in a way I did not anticipate.
One more reader for now:
My father was put into hospice, and all his meds were stopped. He “recovered” and lived another six months. After they “kicked him out” of hospice, he and I spent a lot of quality time together. When the end came, he was ready even though he could no longer speak. The hospice nurse came and looked at all the meds and found that while we still had the liquid morphine, we no longer had the Ativan, so we ordered a stat delivery from the pharmacist.
Giving morphine to a dying person can feel a lot like murder, and listening to the death rattle is more distressing than listening to a crying infant, but I think that the death experience is far worse for the person attending the death than for the one who is dying.
The Ativan was given to my father late in this process, but that was the drug which provided him with joy and relief. Shortly after he received the drug, I believe I witnessed him greeting his mother who had died 40 years ago.
My father then developed what is called a Cheyne-Stokes respiration; he would breath rapidly for a few minutes and then stop breathing. He resumed breathing like clockwork at 65 seconds from his previous breath. This lasted for hours. His last breath sounded much like a laugh, and I thought it was his way of saying good-bye.
I thought the event would be gruesome, but it was a special bonding experience which has helped me to reduce my fear of dying.
I asked that question in an earlier note of readers discussing Jennie Dear’s piece on what it feels like to die. This first reader prefers to go like his grandfather did:
He was a really quiet guy, just like me. He and my grandmother went visiting a friend in their neighborhood when they were both in their late 70s. During the visit, while my grandmother and the neighbor were having a conversation and my grandfather sat quietly listening to them, he died without uttering a sound and without moving. He left as quietly as he always was in life. It was just perfect. I wouldn’t mind going like that.
George W. Romney, an automobile executive who became a three-term Governor of Michigan, a Republican Presidential candidate and a member of the Nixon Cabinet, died yesterday at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a Detroit suburb. He was 88. His wife, Lenore, whom he married in 1931, found him collapsed yesterday morning on the treadmill in the exercise room of their home, their son G. Scott Romney said. The office of the Oakland County Medical Examiner issued a statement saying only that Mr. Romney had died of natural causes.
Suddenly. Of natural causes. At a ripe old age. After having lived an accomplished and fulfilling life. And having felt well enough that morning to have gotten on a treadmill.
Another reader prefers a more serene exit: “Having been present for three deaths, I think slipping away in the arms of Morpheus has a lot to recommend it.” (Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, is the root of the word morphine.) This next reader prefers another drug, psilocybin: “I’d want to die shoeless, in the sun and on the grass, consumed by magic mushrooms.”
This reader doesn’t want to see it coming:
In my sleep. Or … freezing to death. I hear that’s kind of like going to sleep.
It was the first time I ever understood why freezing to death is sometimes described as peaceful or soothing or just like falling asleep, descriptions that had always seemed to hint at some unfathomable mind-transformation within the freezing person, some power extreme cold had to enchant the brain’s basic mechanisms of homeostasis. It didn’t feel violent, that was the thing. Even with the wind ripping past you. It was like certain parts of your body just accrued this strange hush. Like you were disappearing piece by piece.
This reader gets dark: “Given the choice, suicide by firearm—quick, painless, and not as messy as pulling a Jean-Paul Marat in the bathtub.” Another gets romantic: “I want to die in my own bed, in my husband’s arms, who expires with me at exactly the same time!” Another gets more casual: “I want to die like my grandfather—in seconds, from a massive heart attack, at the age of 85, while out on a date.”
Let’s hear from a healthcare professional:
We see too much prolongation of suffering, so I’m extremely conservative on my end-of-life game plan. If I’m diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer, for instance, I say screw the Whipple and chemo/radiation and I’m making vacation plans. I see no point in prolonging my life a year or two if it’s a constant merry-go-round between hospitals and specialists and my QOL [quality of life] is in the toilet. I’m more interested in living than surviving.
Along those lines, here’s a reader in Bend, Oregon:
A sudden death after a long, healthy life would be perfect. But if I’m not so lucky, I’m very glad I live in Oregon, where voters passed a Death With Dignity Act 22 years ago. I would take full advantage.
This reader wants to disappear in an instant:
I don’t care when I die, but I want it to be sudden. I don’t want time to anticipate, I don’t want to have to try to come to terms with my own mortality, and I don’t want to have to say goodbye to anyone. I just want to be living, and then suddenly not be living anymore.
I don’t mean for that to be quite so depressing—only that if I keel over eight minutes from now, I won’t be around to have any kind of negative feelings about my death. The idea of non-consciousness and non-existence is a comfort to me, the same way heaven is to spiritual people. I want to be around for a while longer, but I wouldn’t have the capacity to be upset if I weren’t.
Speaking of a sudden unexpected death, over the weekend I caught up with an old podcast episode hosted by a friend of mine, author Chris Ryan, interviewing another friend of mine, animal photographer Carli Davidson. One of the many topics they discussed was how Americans typically prolong the dying process to a pathological extent. Chris cited a clip from BBC’s Planet Earth in which a seal is eaten by a Great White Shark in the blink of an eye (though the filmmakers prolong the moment with extreme slo-mo):
Chris admires the seal’s end of life:
These harbor seals live on average 30 years. So let’s say that seal got eaten in its prime—was 22, 25, somewhere like that. So that’s 25 years of lying on warm rocks, hanging out with your friends, swimming around, eating fish, doing what you do—and then you die so quickly, so unexpectedly that [the filmmakers] have to slow it down to 1/40th speed.
Back to the human kingdom, here’s another reader with a death in the family:
One winter morning in 1971, my father sat down at the kitchen table, told my mother he was not feeling well, and died. I was born about a month later. My mother had, roughly, nothing.
The point? Well, however I end up dying, I will at least not die without having seen my child, and I will not leave my wife with nothing. (First thing I did when she told me she was pregnant was to sit down and sort out life insurance, testament, etc.) So even if I die a horrible death in all sorts of other ways, I’ll count it a good death in those limited respects.
Another reader is also thinking about her family:
My death doesn’t have to be painless and I’d like to know it was coming. I would rather die after my husband, or at the same time; I would worry too much about him. I would also like to be sure my kids are at least on the road to a healthy adulthood.
This next reader doesn’t really want to think about the death question:
My preference is for something quick, like a light switch being thrown. But in death, as in life, I’ll deal with what I get rather than waste a lot of time worrying about what I want.
And finally, this simple response is a good note to end on:
Some of our readers would prefer a more exciting exit from this Earth than slipping away in your sleep. One points to the Star Trek clip seen above: “It’s a bit dramatic, but I’ve lead such a low-key life that this kind of going out fireworks would be grand.” Another reader:
I want to die in an explosion during an alien invasion where I’m protecting my wife and daughter. I’m killing a lot of aliens, but there are too many and I need to detonate a bomb in order to protect them. My wife gives me a kiss and my daughter is crying and they flee. Then I arm the bomb, wait for the aliens to surround me and say “Let’s have a bomb”—dying in a blaze of glory and live on in history books.
Another replies, “Same, but SKELETONS instead of aliens and I’d be protecting 35,000 cats.” Update from reader Doug:
The reader who wrote about going out in an alien-massacring blaze of glory seems like they just saw Independence Day recently. He combines the elements of Russell (says goodbye to kids and sacrifices himself) and Steve and David (allow the aliens to surround them and deliver cheesy line before escaping … and delivering more cheesy lines)—which, all in all, would be a pretty good way to go out.
Another reader quotes a classic line from Will Rogers: “I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather—not screaming in terror, like the passengers in his car.” This reader looks to literature:
There is a story within a story I recently read, called “50 Going Down.” There is no universe of decay and decrepitude, as one sinks closer and closer into the yawning mouth of the grave. The Creator in the writer’s world is kinder than ours. He chose 50 to be the apex of existence, not a toothless or debilitated 90, robbed of our mind and body. When you reach the magical plateau of 50 you begin to go down. Life reverses itself and you grow younger and younger until you are an embryo and then disappear.
That’s the way I want to go.
Another reader goes with:
At an advanced age, shot by a jealous husband. “He died doing what he loved.”
Another randy reader points to a creative death scene from Monty Python (NSFW because bewbs):
Do you have an unconventional death scenario you’ve ever daydreamed about? Is there a death scene from a movie you’ve always admired? Drop us a note and we’ll update.
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