Posted on 09/09/2025 9:49:28 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
After years at the bedside of dying patients, a hospice doctor noticed a striking pattern – when the end comes, people don’t cling to fear. In its place come final words that are quiet, powerful, and often shockingly unexpected.
While death is one of the most feared and least discussed parts of life, it is a moment of deep psychological transformation for many. Dr. Christopher Kerr, a palliative care physician with over two decades of experience at Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo, has studied more than 1,500 end-of-life events. His findings challenge our traditional understanding of dying – not as a void, but as a “unique vantage point” that “changes one’s perspective and perception.”
“It naturally draws you inward. There’s reflection, and often people focus on the best points of having lived and having mattered. And that’s usually our relationships,” said Dr. Kerr, who heads the research team on dreams and visions at the end of life.
Contrary to what many expect, the final days of life are not always filled with fear.
“We’ve all been harmed in one way or another for having lived, and we seem to get put back together through these experiences,” he told the Sun. “And so, the life you live gets validated, and inversely, the fear of death seems to lessen.”
Kerr’s research shows that most dying patients experience powerful dreams or visions – sometimes involving meetings with long-lost loved ones or recalling significant life events – that provide emotional closure......
According to Kerr, children experience death differently – often because they don’t fully grasp its finality.
Instead of fear, many terminally ill children see comforting visions, like animals that assure them they’re “loved and not alone.”
“Children are creative and imaginative and can access that part of them,” Kerr said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
if i quit smoking, i won’t know what i died from
“I just found some information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of Hillary Clinton.”
The Hindus say:
“I’ll be right back”
My friend Lou was a retired professor at Bucknell University and quite the humorist.
He wrote his own obituary before he died.
We were together a few hours before his death, and it was clear he was ready to go home.
His obituary was read by Click & Clack on Car Talk.
“LEWISBURG - Louis J. Casimir Jr. bought the farm Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004, having lived more than twice as long as he had expected and probably three or four times as long as he deserved.
Although he was born into an impecunious family, in a backward and benighted part of the country at the beginning of the Great Depression, he never in his life suffered any real hardships.
Many of his childhood friends who weren’t killed or maimed in various wars became petty criminals, prostitutes, and/or Republicans.
He survived three years overseas in an infantry regiment in excellent health, then university for four years on the GI bill, and never thereafter had to do an honest day’s work.
He was loved by good women, had loyal friends, and all his children were healthy, handsome and bright.
For more than six decades, he smoked, drank and ate lots of animal fat, but never had a serious illness or injury.
His last wish was that everyone could be as lucky as he had been, even through his demise was probably iatrogenic.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 43 years, Judy.
He is survived by his brother Jack of Houston, Texas; and his children, Randall Kent of Brunswick, Ga., Louis John III (Trey) of Lewisburg, Thomas Bettis of Lewisburg and Edith Austin Wheat of Austin, Texas.
Lou was a daredevil: his last words were “Watch this!”
A memorial service and barbecue will be held on Labor Day at Lou’s place.”
A Dream Within a Dream
By Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
This is exactly how his obituary read in the regional newspaper.
.....rosebud.....
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” - 1 Corinthians 13:12
Covid?
I see this gif used all over the place, what’s it from?
Probably the most important thing to communicate to them as they pass is “Thank You”.
“I don’t mind dying...I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” -Yogi Berra
“And you wore THAT on the airplane???”
Back in the 80’s I flew to see my parents wearing jeans and a T Shirt. My dad said about the same, and then was astounded when I told him I was one of the better dressed flyers.
Later I got him trip to Europe, he took 2 suits with him and found out I wasn’t wrong.
Kitties, too!! I miss ours so much!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_Buster_Scruggs
2018 movie by the Coen Brothers. It’s a series of vignettes rather than a cohesive movie. It’s all Western, and the picture in question involves a cowboy who tried to rob a bank and didn’t do a very good job of it.
This one’s good:
My mom said the same thing, about Jesus taking her home, only she told us a date early in August, which was a month away. The date came and went. She did finally go home in late September that year (2017).
I told my wife that at my wake (don’t waste money on a funeral) to set up my kegerator next to a podium. Have people come up, tip one for me the tell the worst bad joke and/or funny story about me so I can go out with laughter.
A family friend died when her son was 10. Shortly after that he was visiting our house to hang out with my sons. When he and I were alone he blurted out, “When I get to Heaven I’m going to play lots of video games”. I figured he wanted to talk about his mother, so I asked, “Momma doesn’t like video games. What do you think she’s doing in Heaven?” Without missing a beat he said, “Talking on the phone”. LOL LOL
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