My aunt died with her three children (still minors), her husband, her brother (my father), her sister (a nun) and her mother (my grandmother) by her side.
My grandfather died with his wife and daughter with him. His other daughter (my mother) was not there. He was 92 and quite ill with multiple maladies.
My grandmother died in her sleep about six feet away from her daughter, my aunt. My mother was by that time 6000 miles away. She was 85 and also had multiple conditions that could have been the proximate cause.
My other grandmother died with my father (her son) and my mother in the room. They had just arrived to visit her, she expired within an hour of their arrival. They did not expect her to die, but she was 100 and had the flu, so no big surprise.
My cousin committed suicide at age 17. His mother (my aunt) found him hanging in his room. A huge shock, but not a surprise to anyone who knew him. He had suffered mental illness for some years and attempted it before.
That’s all the deaths in my close family during my lifetime. I reckon at least two would colorably be described as “surrounded by loved ones”.
My father in law recently passed with his wife, two daughters, one grandson and two sons-in-law at the hospital. My wife was on a transcontinental flight at the time trying to get there, she landed six hours after he passed.
Since we’re on the topic, allow me to share my biggest foot-in-mouth episode of my career.
I worked night shift at an in-patient hospice. One of the patients, an 80-something woman, had a daughter who would stop in every morning to see Mom on her way to work.
This one morning I was in the hallway when I saw daughter approaching. We exchanged pleasantries, and, when she asked how Mom was doing, I replied that she was fine, in fact she had had a very quiet night.
When my mother was nearing the end at a certain point my sister called us all into the room to be with her. My now retired sister was a hospice doctor and has seen literally thousands of people die so she can often make a pretty good guess of when the end is near. In mom’s case she was right and all of us in the home at the time were there.
When my husband was nearing the end I was spending as much time as possible with him. Like 10-12 hours a day. My sister was again there, but as I was the one sitting next to my husband and holding his hand I was the one who noticed when he stopped breathing. But, again, he had family with him.
So yes, it can and does happen. Particularly when a death is expected in the near future.
I’m interested in all these people who say, “the hospice nurse knew when it would happen”. Because we asked my mom’s hospice nurse, and she said it was really hard to guess. It might be a day or two, or it might be as long as two weeks.
She certainly doesn’t tell us, “you don’t need to take shifts overnight, the end is near”.
Not sure how they know, but as I said earlier, my mom’s doctor told us she wouldn’t last the last the night, and he was right. Just emphasizing that it does actually happen…
I think there might be some variability. Heart disease has a certain progression. Certain types of organ failures have a certain progression. Other times the steps from living to not are a bit more murky.
Sure. But once the patient hasn’t eaten or taken water for a day or two, and is pretty well unresponsive, at that point it’s just a battery slowly running down as the last of their energy reserves are consumed by their metabolism. Which sets a bit of an upper limit.
Net of any surprises wherein, e.g. the liver shuts down and their blood chemistry goes wacky, stopping their heart early.
Well, we all knew Mom was dying. But she actually died just a couple of hours after we decided to split the night into shifts, and 3 of the 4 children left her side. The hospice nurse was there. If she’d known that our mom was likely to die before midnight, i imagine she would have discouraged us all from leaving. So I’m guessing she didn’t know that.
My wife and her mother had a challenged relationship, not speaking for the last eleven years of MIL’s life. However, they sort of reconciled in the last couple of months. My wife was at the hospital holding her mom’s hand while I was rushing in from West Texas. My wife left the hospital for a few minutes to run over to Target for some mundane reason. My MIL passed during those few minutes. My wife is still wracked with guilt over that. The nurses consoled her by saying that her mom must have waited until my wife left to spare her having to witness her departure. I suspect that, if MIL had any control over her passing, she waited until my wife left so that she would be haunted by that forever. I arrived on the scene a couple of hours later.
We were both in the room when my father in law died. This was during COVID and we had to get special permission to be on the patient floor at the time. I think it was concluded that we posed no additional danger to him and that he did not have COVID to give to us. Even so, we did not interact with anyone other than FIL, the nurse on shift at the time, and a doctor.
My own dad died suddenly at home alone. Given things that we learned about him after his death, I’m perfectly fine with that. My last conversation with him was his asking if we (me, wife, and two kids) would come visit over the weekend. I was sort of blowing him off because I really just wanted a weekend at home with no plans. I felt bad about that for a while, but I got over it.
My mom is still rocking along. I have no idea what her departure will be like, though she lives alone and my sister and I are not good about checking on her regularly. If something sudden were to happen, it may be a little while before she is discovered. I have mixed feelings about that.
My experience: When my Dad was diagnosed with extremely advanced cancer, the surgeon told us he had 6-12 months left, perhaps 18 with chemo. In fact Dad died 9 weeks later.
At the other end of the scale, as I said upthread his final two days were in hospice. He clearly had very little time remaining. At one point a nurse tended to him, then pointed out to me some of the visible indicators of his body shutting down (none of which I remember 30 years later), and said he had no more than x number of hours to go. Her estimate was accurate to within an hour or two.
One of these is agonal breathing; basically the person gasps for air periodically, while otherwise comatose. I found it pretty horrible to watch my mom go through as she lay on her deathbed.
Yeah, Dad was like that for several hours although I think it was a little less severe than your Mom’s.
The only thing I think I remember her showing me was something about the color of his finger or toenails.
As they’re down to their final couple / few hours of energy to power the bio-machinery, the body starts reducing circulation to the extremities, hoarding the heat and oxygenated blood to the core. In the wild that leads to frostbite. Indoors that leads to increasingly cool to cold blueish fingers and toes, then hands and feet, then it slowly progresses up the limbs.
For some reason, I find that to be a pleasant way to describe it. When it’s a natural death, the body really does shut down step by step, as if it’s preprogrammed into our DNA.
What’s odd, though, is the rebound effect that often happens shortly before they go into final shutdown mode.
My mom, at one point in hospice, crawled out of her bed and curled up on the couch next to it. The nurses said they found her there, in the middle of the night, laughing. It was quite a feat for the woman doped up on opioids who was lingering near death (to answer the OP, I and other family members sat vigil for days, but she died after I had said goodbye and left).
My mom liked to sleep on the couch. She used to do it all the time (she’d always give me her bed when I’d come to visit, something I now do with my own son). I have no doubt, in her mind, that she was reminiscing with old friends.