Mum,aged 75, went into hospital on the 23rd July to begin chemotherapy treatment for leukaemia. This was first diagnosed at the beginning of July. She had lived reasonably normally with cirrhosis of her liver for thirty years. From the beginning of this year I intuitively felt something was not quite right: standing in the kitchen one evening, I suddenly turned to my wife and said, 'there's going to be a death in the family this year.......my family'. Looking back, I guess this was some sort of pre-cognition. I also kept on receiving flashbacks from my childhood involving my mum: family holidays, first day at Primary school etc. Her chemotherapy timeline went something like this: weeks 1 and 2- mum felt fine and even a little bored; week 3- hair loss started; week 4- some of her hair started to grow back and she made good progress, and the consultant was upbeat and optimistic about the fact she was generally not too unwell; week 5- an out of the blue diagnosis of Sepsis and within days she slipped into semi-consciousness and latterly was fully unconscious at her death. Her mouth full of septic sores and the lining of her stomach eroding, she had no food nor drink for her final seven days. 11:50 pm, on 26th August, she finally passed away. From full hope to complete loss in 5 weeks. Interestingly,she died one hour before her mother, who died of stomach cancer more than 30 years earlier. At the exact time of my mum's death, my sister, who was sleeping at home, woke up suddenly and felt that her bedroom was completely black. Disorientated and confused, she said to heself, 'I don't know how to get back' and felt a presence in the room with her. I wondered if this might be an example of a Shared Death Experience (SDE). Perhaps what my sister experienced was what my mum felt when her spirit lifted out of her body and entranced the black void or tunnel that leads towards the light of Spirit. Not knowing how to get back into her body, her journey to the great eternal had begun. I prayed for my mum's physical recovery and restoration to full health every single day from the time of diagnosis.
