[Magdalen] RIP Sir Terry Pratchett

[Jay Weigel]

I have known several people, among them my father, who waited until family
were all out of the room before they died. Or perhaps all family except
their spouse or closest family member. This has even occurred when the
person was for all intents and purposes comatose.

My mother, on the other hand, departed in a different manner. She had
caught a respiratory bug that had been making the rounds, and because we'd
elected not to have her hospitalized, she was being given oral antibiotics
at home. She wasn't getting better and we knew it was probably the end. The
sitter called my daughter, and she and her husband came over. Mom was
tucked up in her bed and Betsy and Jonathan prayed with her and then he
left the room. Betsy found some swing music on the radio and she said Mom
smiled and closed her eyes. Betsy laid her head down on the bed next to
Mom's and she said Mom just gradually stopped breathing, but she didn't
stop smiling until she was gone. I suspect my dad had come to get her.

On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 4:33 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:

> It seems most of the stories I have heard were along the lines of, "I had
> just stepped out of the room to <get a meal/get some air/talk with a
> MD/etc.> and in those moments he left." People seem to prefer to leave when
> others are not present.  Your parents must have had a close and supportive
> relationship.
>
> The deaths in my family have generally been following a period of complete
> non-responsiveness.
>
> And yet: Helen, my dear mother-in-law, lay for days in a coma, and then
> died on the same date as her beloved Vince died several years before.  It
> wasn't until after she plugged her mother's birth and death dates into her
> genealogy program that Christine realized this.
>
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
>
> On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 2:46 PM, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 12:07 PM, ME Michaud <michaudme at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > I sat with my mother as she was dying and I was ASTONISHED at
> > > the similarities with labor and childbirth. Many years later I had a
> > > friend who was a doula, and she said the same. Her father's dying
> > > was more like childbirth than she ever would have imagined.
> >
> > I wasn't with my dad when he died, but my mom was. She was about to
> > help him prepare to go to dinner, and he was found to have simply and
> > silently departed. I know it depressed him to realize he was in the
> > nursing home (a quite nice one) permanently; I like to think he looked
> > around and decided life wasn't going to get better than that, his dear
> > wife was there, and he somehow consented to (or nodded yes to a call
> > to) step through the veil.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Scott R. Knitter
> > Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA
> >
>