I spent 20 years in hospital nursing, 10 of it in ICU.
I have been the only human witness to many deaths. Many others died with family or friends present.
The most unusual death I ever witnessed was an atheist. He was in ICU on the ventilator suffering from liver failure.
Liver failure is not a good way to go. He was in a coma, bleeding from the eyes, nose, lungs, in his urine...
He hadn't even blinked voluntarily in several days. When his heart flipped into a lethal rhythm, He sat up, opened his eyes and stared.
It is the one and only time I saw anybody sit up to die. It may have only been an oddity but I still can't explain it and haven't talked to any one that could.
How odd and almost haunting that must've been to witness.
Maybe the lethal heart rhythm sent a last adrenoline like fight or flight reflex through his body as it's last gasp at life.
How did you know he was an athiest? Did he tell you this during his last days?
Can't substantiate, but remember hearing that Stalin did that. Sat up, cursed looking upward, then laid back and died.
TASMANIANRED ADDED: "Liver failure is not a good way to go. He was in a coma, bleeding from the eyes, nose, lungs, in his urine..."
TASMANIANRED ADDED: "He hadn't even blinked voluntarily in several days. When his heart flipped into a lethal rhythm, He sat up, opened his eyes and stared. "
TASMANIANRED ADDED: "It is the one and only time I saw anybody sit up to die. It may have only been an oddity but I still can't explain it and haven't talked to any one that could."
Two of the sweetest Christian women I have ever known, who used to take care of me when my parents were out of town, died a few years ago. They were elderly, childless sisters, 7 years apart in age.
The younger sister suddenly died at home first and was found by the older sister, laying back across the bed with her feet on the floor and her arms outstretched. She looked as if she had been sitting on the bed, with her arms outstretched, then fell backwards as she died.
The older sister died in a hospital and, as I understand, had been "out of it" and not moving or opening her eyes for several days. Immediately before she died, she suddenly sat up in bed, opened her eyes, and with her arms outstretched up and out in front of her, said "I love you!" as if she was seeing the LORD, then fell back and died.
I always looked at the event as a positive indication that she DID see the LORD. It made me think that a much as the LORD is love and wants us to love each other, that maybe He gives people that literal last second of life to decide to believe in Him and go with Him as you die.
"I spent 20 years in hospital nursing, 10 of it in ICU. "
I had a friend who was a nurse administrator in the oncology ward. She definitely believes in a higher power. She witnessed or was privy to a number of episodes that could not be explained any other way.
In one case, a nurse friend was summoned by a panel light to an empty room, a room occupied a few hours before by a middle aged woman who had died a very painful cancer death. When the nurse got there, she heard a voice thanking her for her kindness.