Rod Dreher has an interesting post about the death of his grandmother, and a remarkable thing that happened shortly before she died. Excerpt (“Helen” is his grandmother):
My father phoned this afternoon after he and my mother returned from the hospital. He said something extraordinary had happened. Helen was wracked with pain, pain so intense she wept constantly. My father and mother prayed in the room for her, and tried to comfort her. Daddy told me Helen was visibly frightened. At one point, she turned her head toward the door of her hospital room, and said, "God is at the door. Let him in."
She "talked" silently with someone no one else could see for some time. She told my mother, "God tells me he will take care of me, and will take care of y'all." And then: "He wants me to go with him. Tell him I don't want to go yet." My mother told her that it was fine for her to leave, to go in peace. The old lady said no, it's not yet time, and to please let God know. So that's what my mother did. And then Helen's pain went away.
Read the whole thing here; it’s worth it.
Such stories are not unusual. Some years ago a co-worker described to me the death of her father. Lying in his hospital bed, he grew suddenly excited: “Look, there’s…and…” naming people he saw, all of whom had been dead for years. So his daughter said, “Daddy, you go ahead with them if you want to.” And shortly afterwards he died.
Of course these things might be hallucinations, the effects on the mind of a body in its final crisis. But they might not.
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