"This is very interesting, Alice. I've never done this before."
As we die, we may make references that are unclear to the living. This is called low-referential, or nonreferential, language. Dying individuals refer to people, places, or objects not apparent to their beloveds. Subject pronouns such as it and this, in which the referent is ambiguous, are common in transcripts and accounts.
My father’s final words to his typist a day before he died were “This is very interesting, Alice. I’ve never done this before.” What was this enigmatic “this”? The word this echoed in my thoughts as I contemplated why he never said, “Dying is very interesting. I have never died before.” Could it be that the word is unmention- able, too difficult for our minds to grasp in those final moments, or could it be that nobody dies? Was my father having an experience that could not be put into words — a “this” for which there is no language — like the ineffable experiences of those who survive near death? What was the this he was experiencing? I was intrigued by the lack of referent, curious about what might lie behind that mysterious “this.” The nonreferential pronouns it and this (and a few other terms) leave the listener wondering, as in the following examples:
--“It is very beautiful over there.” (What exactly is beau- tiful, and where is “there”?)
--“Too bad I cannot tell you of all of this.” (What is “this”?)
--“It’s not what you think.” (What is it, then?)
--“My vocabulary did this to me” (from poet Jack Spicer). “Lots of people have this...”
--“It’s all in one piece...It’s all in once piece...What you
see in different pieces...it’s all in one piece.”
--“Too bad I cannot tell of all I have seen.
--“I know that’s not what’s happening for me now, but I
know what’s happening is...”
--“I can’t tell you about it.”
--“You will find out later.” (About what?)
--“There is nothing they can do for this.”
The lack of referents implies there are things that the speaker cannot or may not explain. This gives a general feeling that what the speaker is experiencing is either indescribable or may not be com- municated. It is not clear what cannot be told, who is not allowed to be told, or why certain details or references are withheld.
These qualities are also consistent with the experiences of near- death experiencers who explain that certain information is being withheld until they cross the last frontier of death. Many describe how they were instructed or shown that certain things cannot be shared or revealed to them until they die completely and finally. Typical of the descriptions of near-death survivors is that of Shawna Ristic: “There was an understanding that there was this barrier — a frontier to be crossed — and it was decided that I was not going to cross over it. What lay beyond it remained a secret.”
References to life being an illusion also emerge in the accounts and transcripts with the same kind of nonreferential speech:
--“It is all a hoax. Just an illusion.” (Italics added; Roger Ebert’s well-documented last words. What is a hoax?)
--“Today early the Lord told me in representation.” (What did he tell you?)
--“Amazing! I don’t believe it! These are for real?” (What do “it” and “these” refer to?)
This typical description from a near-death experiencer may shed light on what the dying might be witnessing: “The light showed me the world is an illusion. All I remember about this is looking down...and thinking, ‘My God, it’s not real, it’s not real.’ It’s as if all material things were just props for our souls, including our bodies.”
It may be that the words we hear from the dying come from a sea of ineffable metaphysical experience. And we, the living, are merely witnesses to language at the tip of the iceberg.
One utterance I received through the Final Words website is “I miss myself,” which made me think of my aunt’s final words a few months earlier. “The pronoun is all wrong,” my aunt said as she was approaching the end of her life. I wish now that I could have asked her, “What pronoun?” or “Which is the right one?”
Perhaps she was referring to the pronoun I — saying that somehow I is not the right pronoun for who we are as we cross the threshold. Perhaps as mystics and spiritual teachers have told us across time, there really is no “I” — in the same way that others have referred to this life as being simply an illusion.
Of all the nonreferential language that people use at the thresh- old, the most common is language referring to people or places unseen by the living.
The dying speak of visitors of all kinds. Here are some typical examples:
--“Who are all those people out there?”
--“There are so many people in here. I don’t have time to
talk to all these people.”
--“My father died on a Friday morning. He spent the entire Wednesday before that talking, sometimes out loud and sometimes muttering under his breath to a variety of people he had known throughout his life. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen.”
Visions of a crowd have also been reported through the eyes of children and can bring comfort to their parents in the most tragic of circumstances. A young mother shares her daughter’s last words:
I was twenty-eight and had a very ill, six-and-a-half-year- old, wonderful daughter who had fibrosarcoma of the jaw (which young children rarely get). It had grown into a huge tumor on the outside of her lovely face and had also grown into a fairly large tumor inside her mouth. She awoke at 6:30 am on a Monday morning, and I noticed her little fingernails had turned blue. I knew the ending was near.
I took her into my mom’s kitchen to give her some cold orange juice, since she enjoyed this, and I walked around the little kitchen table and leaned against my mom’s sink to watch my young daughter drink her juice. All of a sud- den, she looked up at me and pointed near me and asked, “Who are all those people standing there, Mommy?” I first thought perhaps I had not heard her correctly, so I asked her what she had just said. She repeated to me, “Who are all those people standing there, Mommy?” And I somehow knew “they” had come to help her over (no, I am not reli- gious, spiritual, if you will). I walked around the table to pick her up, and she jerked and went into a coma, from which she did not recover. She died in the local hospital just hours later. Of course, I will never forget this moment, ever...and it has given me some peace.
Perhaps the dead — or our vivid memories of them — do indeed come to “take us away.” Discover more about take-away figures and end-of-life dreams and visions when I talk about situational nonsense.
As we die, we may make references that are unclear to the living. This is called low-referential, or nonreferential, language. Dying individuals refer to people, places, or objects not apparent to their beloveds. Subject pronouns such as it and this, in which the referent is ambiguous, are common in transcripts and accounts.
My father’s final words to his typist a day before he died were “This is very interesting, Alice. I’ve never done this before.” What was this enigmatic “this”? The word this echoed in my thoughts as I contemplated why he never said, “Dying is very interesting. I have never died before.” Could it be that the word is unmention- able, too difficult for our minds to grasp in those final moments, or could it be that nobody dies? Was my father having an experience that could not be put into words — a “this” for which there is no language — like the ineffable experiences of those who survive near death? What was the this he was experiencing? I was intrigued by the lack of referent, curious about what might lie behind that mysterious “this.” The nonreferential pronouns it and this (and a few other terms) leave the listener wondering, as in the following examples:
--“It is very beautiful over there.” (What exactly is beau- tiful, and where is “there”?)
--“Too bad I cannot tell you of all of this.” (What is “this”?)
--“It’s not what you think.” (What is it, then?)
--“My vocabulary did this to me” (from poet Jack Spicer). “Lots of people have this...”
--“It’s all in one piece...It’s all in once piece...What you
see in different pieces...it’s all in one piece.”
--“Too bad I cannot tell of all I have seen.
--“I know that’s not what’s happening for me now, but I
know what’s happening is...”
--“I can’t tell you about it.”
--“You will find out later.” (About what?)
--“There is nothing they can do for this.”
The lack of referents implies there are things that the speaker cannot or may not explain. This gives a general feeling that what the speaker is experiencing is either indescribable or may not be com- municated. It is not clear what cannot be told, who is not allowed to be told, or why certain details or references are withheld.
These qualities are also consistent with the experiences of near- death experiencers who explain that certain information is being withheld until they cross the last frontier of death. Many describe how they were instructed or shown that certain things cannot be shared or revealed to them until they die completely and finally. Typical of the descriptions of near-death survivors is that of Shawna Ristic: “There was an understanding that there was this barrier — a frontier to be crossed — and it was decided that I was not going to cross over it. What lay beyond it remained a secret.”
References to life being an illusion also emerge in the accounts and transcripts with the same kind of nonreferential speech:
--“It is all a hoax. Just an illusion.” (Italics added; Roger Ebert’s well-documented last words. What is a hoax?)
--“Today early the Lord told me in representation.” (What did he tell you?)
--“Amazing! I don’t believe it! These are for real?” (What do “it” and “these” refer to?)
This typical description from a near-death experiencer may shed light on what the dying might be witnessing: “The light showed me the world is an illusion. All I remember about this is looking down...and thinking, ‘My God, it’s not real, it’s not real.’ It’s as if all material things were just props for our souls, including our bodies.”
It may be that the words we hear from the dying come from a sea of ineffable metaphysical experience. And we, the living, are merely witnesses to language at the tip of the iceberg.
One utterance I received through the Final Words website is “I miss myself,” which made me think of my aunt’s final words a few months earlier. “The pronoun is all wrong,” my aunt said as she was approaching the end of her life. I wish now that I could have asked her, “What pronoun?” or “Which is the right one?”
Perhaps she was referring to the pronoun I — saying that somehow I is not the right pronoun for who we are as we cross the threshold. Perhaps as mystics and spiritual teachers have told us across time, there really is no “I” — in the same way that others have referred to this life as being simply an illusion.
Of all the nonreferential language that people use at the thresh- old, the most common is language referring to people or places unseen by the living.
The dying speak of visitors of all kinds. Here are some typical examples:
--“Who are all those people out there?”
--“There are so many people in here. I don’t have time to
talk to all these people.”
--“My father died on a Friday morning. He spent the entire Wednesday before that talking, sometimes out loud and sometimes muttering under his breath to a variety of people he had known throughout his life. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen.”
Visions of a crowd have also been reported through the eyes of children and can bring comfort to their parents in the most tragic of circumstances. A young mother shares her daughter’s last words:
I was twenty-eight and had a very ill, six-and-a-half-year- old, wonderful daughter who had fibrosarcoma of the jaw (which young children rarely get). It had grown into a huge tumor on the outside of her lovely face and had also grown into a fairly large tumor inside her mouth. She awoke at 6:30 am on a Monday morning, and I noticed her little fingernails had turned blue. I knew the ending was near.
I took her into my mom’s kitchen to give her some cold orange juice, since she enjoyed this, and I walked around the little kitchen table and leaned against my mom’s sink to watch my young daughter drink her juice. All of a sud- den, she looked up at me and pointed near me and asked, “Who are all those people standing there, Mommy?” I first thought perhaps I had not heard her correctly, so I asked her what she had just said. She repeated to me, “Who are all those people standing there, Mommy?” And I somehow knew “they” had come to help her over (no, I am not reli- gious, spiritual, if you will). I walked around the table to pick her up, and she jerked and went into a coma, from which she did not recover. She died in the local hospital just hours later. Of course, I will never forget this moment, ever...and it has given me some peace.
Perhaps the dead — or our vivid memories of them — do indeed come to “take us away.” Discover more about take-away figures and end-of-life dreams and visions when I talk about situational nonsense.