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This is a wonderful thread, thank you SO MUCH for making it caucus! I think your account of your mother’s death is very inspiring. God has surely blessed her, and those of us who read about her.

Thanks, Judith Anne. My husband and I were REALLY pulling for a deathbed conversion, but what happened, was pretty cool. And after she died, her daily-Mass, Rosary-reciting [after *every* Mass] friend, told me, "You have no idea how much your mother HATED the Catholic Church. She would ream me out, yelling for minutes on end, for YOU being a Catholic and I didn't even know you then." Anyway, the same lady told me she prays for my mother each any every day, because she wants to make sure she's sitting at the pinochle table when she herself arrives. My mom is SO fortunate to have made friends with Fran. Coincidence? I think not! Her other friend is a Lutheran, who is very strong in her faith, but after my mom died, she just said, "I tried for decades to get your mom back in the church, but there's nothing I can do any longer." Two great people. Different ways of thinking, though.

As a nurse, I was with a number of people when they died. I never saw a deathbed conversion, but once I was with a man who hated “all religion” and as he died, his son and I stood praying for him. I think of him often, and pray for the repose of his sould in the Loving Arms of Almighty God through the Grace of Christ our Savior.

I was also with a very beautiful woman who died quite young of cancer, and she saw Christ amid flowers, holding out His arms to her. “Smell the flowers!” she exclaimed, very clearly, “Oh, they are so beautiful! Oh, it’s Jesus! He came for me! He Loves me!”

Both of those, still give me a breath of heaven...