"Sedona had a keen sense of the theatrical, guiding her family dramas like a regal choreographer. She was also a woman of immense faith who would tell anyone who'd listen that it was God who had gotten her through her 83 years. In fact, faith took up so much real estate in Sedona's soul that scarcely a sentence emerged from her meticulously painted lips that wasn't peppered with a reference to God or Jesus."
"Lying back in a recliner, she raised both hands as if she were leading a praise meeting for her church. She gazed around at her assembled family, then up at the ceiling. "I'm coming, Lord. I'm coming home." Her eyes closed; her arms fell limp beside her. Her breathing became irregular, then shallow. A minute or two later, she stopped breathing, and soon after that, her heart stopped."
"Five minutes after her dramatic testimony, she was dead. She'd known. Somehow, she'd known that she was going to die. That was an impressive feat of prophecy. The best prognostic models in the world, fed the most intricate biological data, aren't that precise. And my clinical intuition, such as it is, doesn't come close. She saw the end coming before any of us did."
Many people approaching death appear to sense its imminence, sometimes long before doctors or family recognize it. Common phrases such as "I'm ready" or "I'm going home" may reflect both spiritual conviction and physiological changes. Physiological shifts like falling blood pressure or reduced oxygen can trigger altered awareness and vivid certainty. Faith, personal history, and the brain's changing chemistry can all shape final expressions. Prognostic models fed with biological data often cannot predict such precise timing. Even with scientific explanations for some experiences, elements of mystery and existential meaning remain in how dying is experienced.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]