Frequently I will hear a person say “I am ready to die,” “I just want to die,” “Why am I not dead yet?” or “Why is this taking so long?”
These questions tend to occur months or at least weeks before actual death occurs. It is like there is an impatience that says, “If it is going to happen, lets get it over with.”
What I really hear when people say these things or ask these questions is that life at this point has no purpose. Life is only presenting unhappiness, often pain and discomfort, and lack of joy or interest. In other words the person is truly miserable where life has put them. “Let’s move on to the end of the experience, I don’t like being stuck here” describes the feeling.
A constructive response to someone who is repeatedly wishing they were dead is to get them to talk about their life now. What are they thinking and feeling? What are their fears? What is their unhappiness? Is there anything we can do to make life more pleasant, easier or different?
As a person gets closer to death, is actually weeks to days from death, their focus shifts and as their body is actively shutting down they aren’t thinking or feeling as much on a conscious level. Their activity is centered in the other dimensions or realities. They are more in the dream world than this reality. Now there will be less talk of dying. Now they know on some level that indeed they are dying. Now they have entered the actual labor of dying and talk is not necessary.
