A while ago, we shared some of the most haunting deathbed confessions and final words that nurses have ever heard from patients. Other nurses in the BuzzFeed Community then contributed their own, so here are some more wild stories.
1.“I’m an RN. While I was a student, I was caring for a lady who had end-stage renal failure. She had a DNAR (‘Do not attempt resuscitation’) and was shutting down. We were having a little chat — well, I was chatting away while helping her to put on some lotion — when she stopped, looked over my shoulder, and said, ‘Bill’s here, love. I’ve got to go.’ She then swiftly stopped breathing. I read her old notes and learned that Bill was her deceased husband.”
2.“My grandma confessed to murder on her deathbed. Normally you’d think it was the pain relief, but she was such an eccentric woman that it was actually believable. We traced all her ex-husbands, partners, and any other likely candidates, and fortunately, no one was missing or had died an untimely death, but sometimes I wonder…”
3.“When I was an EMT, we arrived at the scene and found an old man who was already dead. He was on holiday with his wife and two adult children. Apparently that morning he’d said to his family, ‘I’m going to die today.’ After he collapsed, he briefly regained consciousness and said, ‘See? I told you I was going to die,’ before going unconscious and then passing. His poor son was crying as he said, ‘That’s Dad. Always had to be right.'”
4.“I’m a practicing advanced care paramedic. One night, we got a call to the condo of a 29-year-old man who had become severely sick from COVID. He had refused to go to the ER the week before, so by the time we got there, it was too late. CPR went on for four and a half minutes. I got him back, but he would fade. This happened three times. During the third and final time, he came back and was with me for just enough time to say, ‘Two worlds wait for us: a beautiful one, and one with fire. Please, I don’t want to go anymore.'”
5.“I took care of a World War II veteran with dementia. He would say the number ’22’ over and over, and his family never knew the significance of it. The number didn’t line up with any major events or dates that they were aware of. The day before he died, his mental state became incredibly clear, and he started telling the staff, ‘Twenty-two men…I killed 22 men over there.’ Poor guy. He lived with that anguish for 50-plus years.”
6.“I’m a white male. I’ve worked with many elderly people as a registered nurse. I had one man who was 90-plus years old talk about how he had been a part of the Ku Klux Klan in his youth and how ashamed he was for participating in some truly gross and despicable behavior. He had several nursing assistants and patient care techs who were either Black or Hispanic, and he was always so polite and sometimes even loving toward them. I could tell how deeply his past haunted him. He asked me not to share this information with any of the staff. The last days before he became too weak to speak anymore, he asked one of the Black RNs if she forgave him. He passed a couple of days later.”
7.“Doctor here. Working in the Deep South, I’ve heard a lot of patients’ final words be about the regret they have for disowning their LGBTQ children and the relationships they could’ve had. Unfortunately, rigid religious/political dogma tears apart more families than most people realize. Life is short. Accept people — especially the ones you love — for who they are and not who you would like them to be. That’s always been my big takeaway lesson from hearing these stories.”
8.“During my first year as a nurse, I worked in palliative care. There was a 28-year-old dying of cancer. She’d moved here from Canada to be with her boyfriend, who left her a year after she moved. We weren’t expecting her to deteriorate so fast. I held her hand as she died alone, without her family or friends. But right before she died, she cried and told me she wished she’d never left Canada. Her family was overseas and couldn’t make it in time. I’ll always remember this heartbreaking moment. It reminds me to regularly tell my family I love them, to spend time with friends, and to stop making excuses.”
9.“I had this old patient where I used to work who would never talk unless his daughter was in the room. She had asked something about her stepmother, who passed away a couple of years before, and her death was the reason he had to come to the nursing home. On one of the days after she left, I was getting him ready for bed, and the last thing he said before passing was, ‘I should have finished the job of drowning her and burning down the house.'”
10.“I used to plan fundraising events and would hold a candlelit memorial walk around our hospice campus every year. One year, there was a hospice patient in the house. She somehow sensed that she was in her final hours on the morning of the event, and she told her family, ‘Don’t worry. I’m leading the parade today.’ The family had no idea what she was talking about, but she ultimately passed later that day. Her family saw us setting up the memorial walk and asked what we were doing. When we told them, they all started to laugh and cry. They brought her photo out with them that night and led the procession.”
11.“One patient was in for very routine, fairly minor surgery. Before going under, he said, ‘I’m going to die. I know I’m going to die.’ I held his hand and told him he would be fine. He died shortly after the procedure.”
12.“My grandpa, a Sicilian man with blessed cooking skills, told us on his deathbed that his meatballs were actually frozen meatballs from the grocery store.”
13.“EMT here. My most chilling experience ever involved an old woman who was heavily Christian, judging by the family sentiment and household decor. She was struggling to breathe, and her last words were, ‘I feel nothing. I thought this would be better.’ Yeah, I was depressed for a full month after that.”
14.“My friend who’s a nurse told me about an elderly patient she had. The woman apparently woke up late at night and told her ‘I have to fart’ in Spanish. She then farted (a stick-to-the-walls kind of fart) and went into a short coma and died three hours later. There was just enough time for her daughter to come in and say goodbye. After her death, the room still smelled like ass for a few days from her fart. They left the windows open over the weekend, and the janitorial staff did all they could to get rid of the smell. In the survey, the family mentioned that the room smelled bad. The supervising nurse had to have a small meeting with everyone about keeping the rooms clean. I just think about it sometimes.”
—Anonymous
15.“I’ve witnessed several final words during my time in the ER. The wildest one was when a man was brought in after having a severe heart attack. Shortly before losing consciousness and going into cardiac arrest, he started mumbling, ‘The fire! The fire! It burns!'”
16.And finally: “I had a patient whose memory had been fading for years. It’s weird…right before a patient dies, sometimes they’ll suddenly appear to be doing a lot better. Anyway, he thought I was his late wife. I played along and just listened to him while he recalled his engagement, his wedding, his first child’s birth, and a few other memories. At one point he said, ‘Oh! Irene, there you are! Sorry, you know my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. Well, thank you for listening to an old man tell his stories. I hope you have great stories to tell one day too. I’m coming, Irene.’ Then he passed.”
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity, and some are from this Reddit thread.
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