THE MOMENT OF DEATH

I have been at the bedside of many, many people at their exact moment of death. Those people have taught me what happens in the hours to minutes before death. Just before they take their final two or three breaths most people make a facial grimace or frown. Once in a while I have seen a smile but usually it is a grimace. My belief, and I can not prove this in anyway, is that the frown or grimace is made at the actual moment the soul leaves the physical body, the exact moment the driver gets out of the car. Following the facial movement there are usually two or three long spaced out breaths, the rest of the air and energy leaving the body. 

I don't think the facial expression has anything to do with pain or discomfort. It may show a bit of ambivalence about leaving this world but mostly I think it is the expression of release, of the final letting go from the physical body.


When people are heavily medicated during their last hours to minutes they don't seem to show the grimace but either way, grimace or not, nothing bad is happening, nothing out of the ordinary is happening. The person has let go of the hold on the physical just like they are supposed to do. They are now free to go about a new journey. 

We often get very confused about the moment someone takes their last breath. We let our own fear of the moment distort our perception of what happened. We tend to put way too much thought into what the last moment looked like.

Please celebrate life, the joys, the legacy your loved one brought to the physical world. Fill your mind with good memories and let go of your concern for the moment of release. A death in this world is a birth into another world. You have witnessed a birth and the labor it entails.


40 comments

Kelly R

I was relieved to read this. I was at my mother’s side for 13 hours and we saw her breathing becoming more shallow and spaced out. I also witnessed this and have been bothered by it for 4 months.

barbara

Hi Nancy, thank you for sharing your experience. Many normal things occur as death comes but it is startling and often frightening if we don’t understand that what we are watching is the natural way death happens. My blessings to you. Barbara

Nancy

This post brings me so much comfort. In 2009, I was with my Golden Retriever when he was put to sleep and a minute or so after the vet said he was gone, he gasped and I was horrified. Ten years later, I was alone with my 83 year old mom when she passed away after a battle with congestive heart failure. Her caregiver had the day off. She wasn’t feeling well and was having trouble breathing. I had just called the hospice nurse, who told me to put a sedative under her tongue to relax her until she could arrive. She was losing consciousness at that point and stopped breathing. About a minute after her chest stopped moving. Her face contorted and she seemed to inhale deeply three times and then she was gone. It broke my heart. I am so thankful to know that is not unusual. I’m sorry for anyone who has had to endure it.

barbara

Hi Marion, I do believe your Mum could hear you in the moments before she died. She heard you as if in a dream, from afar, but she could hear you. The “grimace” she made right before she died was very much how people die. I don’t think it meant she was in pain or even sad. It was that last push to get out of her body. Sounds like she did a good job. Blessings! Barbara

Marion

Hi Babara, i just lost my dear mum, she had terminal lung cancer and was very very sick the last weeks.
She was on a morphine pump fir the pain and didn’t wake for 2 days. I sat with her for 15 hours until the end and would tell her i loved her and that she was the most wonderful mum in the world. She took a couple of breathes at the end andmade a face like a grimace then another breath and grimace and she was gone.
I am so worried the face she made was because she was in pain or sadness, do you think she could hear me talking to her. I miss her so much already.

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