@Jennifer1984 Said
I think we would all like to pass out of this world looking at peace. No awful grimaces or pain contorted faces and death rattles gargling out from the deepest parts of the throat.
I've never actually watched anybody die and although I know it's inevitable that at least some of my loved ones are likely to pass before I do, I hope that if mine is the last hand they ever hold, or my eyes are the last they ever look into, then all I'll see is a peaceful transition take place.
Not that I'm squeamish. I've seen the inside of a number of human bodies and it isn't pretty. And by the cringe, we smell bloody awful inside.
But we want the last moments of those we love to be content, or happy, or peaceful or whatever, not wracked in pain and suffering.
Art can often imitate life, but it does tend to turn death into a melodrama and I think that does the dying a disservice. It makes their final moments into entertainment when in truth they should be intimate, personal and in a strange way, joyous.
It's not impossible that somebody can be glad for the life they've had and take the view that, now it's ending, it was good while it lasted so be happy at that.
Be glad that you're surrounded by familiar things and the people who love you.
Or, as some put it.... "Leave 'em laughing when you go." Oscar Wilde's last reported words were "Those curtains are awful, either they go or I do."
Gotta admit...that's funny.
Before I became a paramedic I had never seen anyone die. I believe people who work the streets (e.g., paramedics) see a lot more death than the average person.
I had an old nun once who had just been given the last rites. She could not have been happier. For some there is fear. In my experience a lot of people don't even realize they a dying. Of course I was out in the mud and the blood and the beer. I suspect that those in a clinical environment, who know what is happening, there is acceptance.