My grandmother died at the age of 94. I nursed her at her home over a period of 8 months, from the time she began to fail until her death.
For the last five months or so of this time, she was almost what we unfortunately call a ‘vegetable;. She was bed-ridden, blind, and deaf, and she didn’t recognize anybody anymore. We had a nurse coming in to bathe and check on her a few times a week, but the rest of the time, I had her care. I could sit her up and spoon-feed her, but there was no way to actually converse, because what was left of her mind was all over the place. When she spoke at all, her words made no sense – usually she was calling to relatives long dead; and once, she seemed to be seeing Jesus.
During that time, I had to do laundry by going out of the apartment and to the back of the building, into a laundry facility. One day in deep November, when it was unusually cold, I was walking back there with a load of laundry. I was tired, sad, worn out from the work of caring for her, and very depressed by the impending loss of this person who had been my ‘mother’, really, and my greatest friend.
But I happened to notice that even in the cold, there was a lush, perfect patch of beautiful clover growing. It inspired me and lifted my spirits so much that I felt a great rush of happiness and relief.
When I got back into the apartment, I puttered around for a while and then went back to the bedroom, to check on my her. Out of the blue, she said very coherently, “Wasn’t that clover beautiful?”
Remember, she was blind, deaf, absolutely bed-ridden, and mostly out of her mind at that point. There was no way that she could have gotten out of bed, looked out the window, and seen the clover.
A friend of mine who sometimes helped me with her care experienced something very similar a little while later, where Granny seemed know of an item brought into the house that she couldn’t have known about.
This always seemed to me to be a ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between minds, which may happen near death. I don’t know – it’s one of those mysteries that many of us experience but can’t explain. But once you’ve experienced it, no ‘rational’, ‘scientific’ explanation satisfies. You just know that something extraordinary took place.
Wow....that was very touching!
Thanks for sharing.
That blurring also sometimes takes place during the changes of adolescence.
I remember there was a time when I was 12 to about 19 that I could tell whether some one was dead or alive just by looking at photographs. We tested it a few times. I was always right.
It eventually went away. I researched it and it is not an unusual phenomenon to have young adolescents be temporarily gifted with some sort of second sight.
I do not have one airy fairy bone in my body.