By working with the dying hospice nurses gain an insight into death
and the opportunity to witness the signs of a life beyond our own. I had one gentleman three months
after I started working in hospice I thought I can't do this anymore this is just too much. I'm gonna get burned out or it's just too stressful. So just as I was really trying to
debate whether I was going to leave this field or not I had an experienced that just kind of
blew me away One of the LPN's came up to me and
said "Mr so-and-so just died" and so I took that information and we said alright, we'll call a physician and call the coroner and get all the information that we need and I
was walking down the hall making bed checks to ensure that everybody was okay and this one old fellow was climbing out of bed and he was really out of pain control and I was thinking we need to get him settled down and I walked into the room and I said "Let me help you get taken care of." and he
said, "I gotta get outta here!" and I said, " I understand." and he "I have to die."
and I said "You know I would probably want to die too if I had that much pain and let me help you, let me see what we can do." He said "No you don't understand" He said "I have to die." and I said well I don't even know where it came I said, "Well you have to wait to get your own invitation sometimes just because we want to die it doesn't mean we get to die. We have to wait until tell it's time." "Well that guy down there just got his invitation." "he said "I knew him
from Lyman and I said, "What do you mean?" and he said, " well he just shuffled by here!" and the hair on the back of my neck
stood up and I thought that was a curious term "Shuffled by" and he said. "I want you to go get my son." he said "I
knew him, I knew him from one Lymon when we were kids." and he said, "And he just shuffled by" and he points from his door to the window
and how he went across in front of his bed and I thought boy there's a lot I don't know yet! I had a kid that I lost last week who saw horses but he saw a horse and his dream was about two weeks before he died he
was on this big brown horse and they were going through this field and it was very smooth it wasn't like a gallop but they
were flying and he said that all of a sudden they
kinda jumped over a barrier and when they landed they
landed in a riverbank that had overflowed its beds and it stopped the horse stopped and
turned sideways waiting for this kid tell him which way to go. Whether to go into the woods or out of the woods and I asked him which way he chose and he said we went out and I said, "What do you think would of happened if you'd of gone into the woods?" He said, "I think I'd be gone." and I told him I thought he would too
and I told him that that horse would probably come back for him when it was
time for him to go that horse would be the one to come back.
Well that afternoon his mom was washing dishes and the horse came and she went to talk to
him and she asked David if this horse was
there and he said "Yes." and she said I think he's probably here
to get you and she said I think so too and within
two hours he had gone he died on his horse. You
feel a presence, you feel something is in the room, you
know there's something there. One time there was this man and he was really really close to death and he was very very weak and and he looked
up and he was looking at something and he looked very very scared and the nurse said to him "It's okay they're there to help you. They won't hurt you." and he put his hand up and he had his hand up like somebody was holding it and he did this for a few minutes and there is no way this man had the
strength to hold his hand up by himself and he
died just a few minutes later too. So, there's something. I had one really
neat fellow that we were taking to the hospice unit and he was really close to dying and
his son was nearby. This poor guy went through an incredible
bath from the nurse and he didn't move at all he didn't blink and eye so we would say he was an unresponsive and as we were walking down the hall
pushing his bed down the hall he opened his eyes and he looked straight up and his little toothless mouth and he went ( Excited Smile ) and waved and just smiled and closed his eyes and 5 minutes later he was gone. I don't know who he was waving at but that's not uncommon. As death approaches patients may have
visions of angels or see tunnels of white light. Other people receive angelic comfort from
someone they already know. Patients who are closer to their dying time
will see those who have already died often times. They'll talk about their dead
grandparents sitting at their bed side brothers who have died before. I'm not so certain that we just see
spirits running around I don't really believe that and I've never heard anything that scary
but I have heard of a lot of patience who are very afraid of dying talk about
seeing a father in law in the kitchen and that would scare me out of my mind but
they're not afraid and it really made me realize about how
they are just sort of drifting to the other side
they have one foot here in one foot somewhere else and a patient who is very frightened will tell
you that and yet for some reason it doesn't bother them. That would bother me. Mary was a 52-year-old woman. She had Lou Gehrig's Disease and it was getting pretty bad she was
pretty close to death and the muscles in her throat were closing up
they weren't working very well and she had a fear that she was going to
drown which was essentially a real possibility for her and one
of her last wishes was that her mother not be told. Her mother
was 90 years old and her mother liked to be called Grandma Rose and she
just said this is too hard for mother to go through to watch a child die and especially the way I
am dying. I don't want my mother to know. Now the family was in conflict with this
but it was her last wish so what could they do and then the story as Grandma Rose tells me is she lived in Texas and one night she
went to bed. She was getting into bed and she saw her
husband standing there and her husband had been dead for
twenty years but she says that he was as real
to her as I am to you and he said "Rose, I've come to take Mary home." and at
that point Grandma Rose just started to scream and said no no please let me go back and hold my baby
one more time don't take her until I've gone and I've held her
and I've said goodbye and I've kissed her please don't do that!"
and so he just kinda smiled and faded away and she knew at that
point that he would allow that. So she got on the next plane, she came to Denver and for three days she stayed with her
daughter and she told her stories and she combed her hair and she gave her a bath and she was
holding her daughter when she died and I was there and she
just looked at me and she said, You know I brought her into the world and it's only
right that I'm with her when she goes out." and that would have never happened
if Mary's husband wouldn't of come to her and told her that he was taking her home. Like one person said to me Well, it's easy for you to say it's going to be peaceful you're not going to die. and I said, you know you're right. All I know is what I see and all I know is that somewhere along
the line you're not going to be afraid anymore.
Somewhere in those last hours it's going to go away and somebody will throw you a lifeline . It will be okay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
