A study released in June suggests that hearing is one of the last senses to disappear during death. Scientists found that the brains of "actively dying" patients in palliative care (some unresponsive, some still responsive) still registered activity in response to sounds.
“Our data shows that a dying brain can respond to sound, even in an unconscious state, up to the last hours of life.”
Although death has historically been medically defined as the moment when the heart irreversibly stops beating, recent studies have suggested brain activity in many animals and humans can continue for seconds to hours.
Decompensation progresses over a period of minutes even after the pulse is lost. Even when vascular collapse is the primary event, brain and lung functions stops next. The heart is the last organ to fail.
“First hunger and then thirst are lost. Speech is lost next, followed by vision. The last senses to go are usually hearing and touch.”
Summary: Hearing is widely thought to be the last sense to go in the dying process.
Not all cultures hold funerary memorials forty days after death. Some pagan traditions believe that the soul of a recently deceased person continues to wander the earth for forty days; other religious traditions believe the soul will rest in the Lord's hands after death.
Visions and Hallucinations
Visual or auditory hallucinations are often part of the dying experience. The appearance of family members or loved ones who have died is common. These visions are considered normal. The dying may turn their focus to “another world” and talk to people or see things that others do not see.
In time, the heart stops and they stop breathing. Within a few minutes, their brain stops functioning entirely and their skin starts to cool. At this point, they have died.
Their mouth may fall open slightly, as the jaw relaxes. Their body may release any waste matter in their bladder or rectum. The skin turns pale and waxen as the blood settles.
For the first few minutes of the postmortem period, brain cells may survive. The heart can keep beating without its blood supply. A healthy liver continues breaking down alcohol. And if a technician strikes your thigh above the kneecap, your leg likely kicks, just as it did at your last reflex test with a physician.
As the blood pools, patches appear on the skin within 30 minutes of death. About two to four hours postmortem, these patches join up, creating large dark purplish areas towards the bottom of the body and lightening the skin elsewhere. This may be less apparent on darker skin. This process is called livor mortis.
Agonal breathing or agonal gasps are the last reflexes of the dying brain. They are generally viewed as a sign of death, and can happen after the heart has stopped beating.
Talking to your loved one after their death is a common experience, and many people feel that the connection goes both ways. Grief experts say these conversations can be a healthy coping tool and a source of comfort.
The most overwhelming and common reaction to a sudden death is shock and uncertainty. This results in feeling disconnected to your feelings or to other people; it can seem as if you are living in a dream. The initial news and stages of grief are often characterized by disbelief.
Some people will become unconscious a few days before dying, however, others may die quite suddenly or even remain awake to some extent right up until they die. Each person is an individual so we can never be certain how long the dying process will take.
The first visible change to the body—occurring 15 to 20 minutes after death—is pallor mortis, in which the body begins to pale. Pallor mortis occurs because blood stops moving through the capillaries, the smallest of the body's blood vessels.
The fear of dying is quite common, and most people feel that death is scary to varying degrees. To what extent that fear occurs and what it pertains to specifically varies from one person to another. While some fear is healthy because it makes us more cautious, some people may also have an unhealthy fear of dying.
Changing vital signs
As a person approaches death, their vital signs may change in the following ways: blood pressure drops. breathing changes. heartbeat becomes irregular.
Although we know that we cannot bring back the past, we ache and hurt because we want their comforting presence in our lives forever. It is very important to grieve when we lose someone. Grieving makes us tender and brings us close to our heart.
No matter what a person's preference is, from the Christian perspective, cremation does not prevent one from going to Heaven.
In the time of Aristotle, it was widely believed that the human soul entered the forming body at 40 days (male embryos) or 90 days (female embryos), and quickening was an indication of the presence of a soul.
Nine night is a separate event to the funeral itself. It's like the Irish wake and takes place nine days after the death of the person. You have a celebration of their life at the point at which their spirit traditionally leaves the body. It's a Jamaican practice with roots in an African tradition.