today a college classmate of mine emailed me telling me his father was dying in a matter of days. he had cancer an now he's going into resp. failure
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I don't know if this helps...sweetgreensOctober 29 2007, 22:44:25 UTC
I am agnostic, and, more than anything, I draw comfort from being with someone who is dying. They are suffering so much that even the dubious existence of an afterlife doesn't bother me much. As much as I'll miss them, I realize that whatever awaits them on the other side (if anything does), is better than the pain they're experiencing.
I was with a few ailing family members (and some elderly friends) when they died, and they always smiled as they took their final breath. That smile stayed with them, even as rigor mortis set in. Many of my more religious family said that it is because they saw the angels coming to bring them to heaven, but I believe that, more than anything else, they felt a profound sense of relief.
Re: I don't know if this helps...norase2000October 30 2007, 09:11:48 UTC
yeah, I agree, dying in itself is pretty painful.. even if you're not that sick physically; on a metaphysical level if you beleive in a "soul" of some sort, "stripping" that away from the physical body I think is really hard, so yeah, I agree with you, by the time its over, its just such a relief. And I've heard that smiling thing soo many times from people of various religions, so i guess its one of the more universal things ppl say to comfort each other, regardless of religion
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I was with a few ailing family members (and some elderly friends) when they died, and they always smiled as they took their final breath. That smile stayed with them, even as rigor mortis set in. Many of my more religious family said that it is because they saw the angels coming to bring them to heaven, but I believe that, more than anything else, they felt a profound sense of relief.
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