Seeing Dead Loved Ones Before Death
My 97-Year-Old Nana Saw Her Mum Just Before Her Death
“Sadness is a wall between two gardens”. — Kahlil Gibran
My Nana lost her Mum to death when she was only 14 years old. So at the age of 97, as she lay dying, it had been over 80 years since she had last seen her Mum.
The circumstances had been tragic. My Nan had few memories of her mother, but those she had shared, were poignant.
Her mother standing on the wooden kitchen table so she could brush the bottom of her hair for her, as it reached all the way down to her ankles. Black hair.
Seeing her mum in tears as her father had brought a woman back from London where he had been convalescing after being gassed in the war, and setting this woman up to stay in a local house.
Her mum being off work from the mill sick, and the inspector calling around, and because she was standing on the table putting up Xmas decorations she had to go back to work.
Missing her mother terribly after her death.
Her childhood ended at the time of her mother’s death, as she then had to attend school just for the mornings, and go to work at the mill in the afternoons. Her family was not wealthy, and they needed the money.
She also was tasked with looking after her two younger sisters including all the cooking, cleaning, and other household duties her mother had previously done.
She always told me her mum had died of a broken heart. That is what she believed. But she never knew the real reason. I had made it my mission to obtain the death certificate and find out for her, and so when I received it neither of us was surprised when we saw the cause of death.
The death certificate gave the reason for death as mitral valve failure (from being weakened from rheumatic fever in childhood).
So in a way she had died of a broken heart.
My Nan had been praying every night before she went to sleep to die for quite a few years.
At 97 years old she had nearly lost her sight and had severe arthritis in her hands. She had had some operations to correct issues with her esophagus which for reasons I am unclear about, kept closing up. She had enjoyed dancing, reading, socializing, traveling, craft making and visiting her family. She had not been able to do most of these things for quite some time.
She always said quite cheerfully, that she prayed God would take her in her sleep and was entirely disappointed the next morning when she kept waking up.
“Come kiss me, wind, and take my
breath
Till you and I are one
And we will dance among the tombs
Until all death is gone” — Wm. Paul Young, The Shack
She had had quite a difficult life, and many sad memories, and despite an inbuilt stoicism, she also had determined that her time for living a quality life had passed and so she was quite impatient to finish her time on this earth.
She had completely lost her faith in God some years before this time after having been extremely active in the Salvation Army.
She had qualified at one time as a lay preacher, and she was very involved in many voluntary activities with the church as well. It all ended abruptly overnight when one of my cousins (her grandson) committed suicide when he was only 18 years old. It had come as a complete shock. The same day he died the local church elders told my Aunt as well as Nana that they couldn’t conduct the service or bury him on church grounds due to suicide being a sin.
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction” — Blaise Pascal
My Nana stopped attending church and, lost her faith overnight.
Her faith had dominated her life, so it created a massive hole in her life. The loss of her faith, her shattered sense of who she was and where God was, her disappointment in her church and church community never really left her from this time.
But now, I had been phoned by my Aunty who told me that Nan was believed to be close to death. She was at this stage in a nursing home and had been bedridden for a few weeks. Nan was going into long periods of sleep without being able to be woken. She had not eaten for three days. Her breathing had slowed down, and her pulse was weak.
I hopped on a plane and traveled down. I got a shock when I walked into Nana’s room, as she was not there. Neither was her bed. I was sure she had passed away, and I had missed saying my goodbyes to her. The nurse hurried out, very concerned, and left me temporarily standing there. She soon came back laughing with my Nan sitting up in bed behind her being wheeled in by the nurses.
They said that the previous night Nana was told that I was visiting the next day. She had immediately rallied. When they came into her room this morning, she was sitting up asking for breakfast and asking for someone to do her hair. None of them could believe the transformation. It was like she rallied to see me. They had showered her, dressed her, sat her up in bed and had wheeled her out to sit in bed and eat morning tea with the other residents.
Suffice to say Nana, and I commenced having a lovely chat. When the nurses left the room to make me a cup of tea, Nana leaned over and in a conspiratorial whisper said to me,
“Debbie, can I ask you a favor?”
“Of course”, I said to her.
“Anything”.
She whispered, “ The nurse has tucked my breasts into the waistband of my skirt, can you please pull them out for me?”
As I reached under the bedclothes to pull up her blouse and release the two flaps of loose skin that were all that remained of her previously very large pendulous breasts, we both dissolved into hysterical laughter until tears rolled down our faces.
She was very grateful.
When the nurses had to come in and help her use the pan for her toiletry, I waited outside the door.
One of the nurses came up and told me how near death she had been in the last two weeks. She also said that only a week prior when Nan had started to go into her long periods of sleep they couldn’t wake her from, she had gotten excited and teary.
She told the nurses that her mother was sitting on the lounge chair in the corner of her room. She refused to let the nurses lay clothes on it, or anyone to sit there as her mother would come and sit on that chair.
I told the nurse that Nan’s mum had passed away over 80 years ago and that Nana would have been so happy to see her, as she had experienced much hardship in her life. I also was so grateful to hear that Nan was not fearful or scared, but she had been both comforted, and exhilarated at seeing her mother.
Nan did not pass away during the three days I stayed. It happened a few weeks later.
But reading a recent story on Medium by Jan Engevik activated my memory of this visit to my Nana I had not thought about for a long time.
I don’t know if the dead revisit us when we are near death, or if it is a trick of the mind, wishful thinking or a hallucination.
I know that Nana was comforted by seeing her mother.
I know, like Jan mentioned in her article that it could be a common occurrence amongst those who are dying.
My Nana was unique and an influential person in my life and I certainly know that if she appeared to me before my death that I would be just as tearful and just as excited as she had been at her own mother’s appearance. Regardless of why. That question would cease to matter.
“You can kiss your family and friends goodbye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you” — Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth
