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The hallucinatory thoughts of the dying mind

Delirium is one of the most perplexing deathbed phenomena, exposing the gap between our cultural ideals of dying words and the reality of a disoriented mind.

Who do you think will be waiting for you?” Or, “Tell me some nice things you remember about your mother.” Family members might be told that the patient has already undergone a sort of social death; though their body is present, the previous person they is gone, so a new relationship is required. A bright-faced, cheery woman, she’d fold me in her arms, say that she loved me, then laugh chirpingly and say that she prayed for me, that unmistakable Irish grandmother code for “I want you to go to Mass.” Now I was no longer a child, and now she was dying. My speculation is that the interpretive control promoted in “Final Gifts” reflects a cultural adaptation to dilemmas posed by delirium to a laissez parler approach to language at the end of life.

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