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How will you use your last few breaths? Some people stay silent at the end of their lives, others express love or forgiveness. Then there are those who opt to go out with a bang, uttering words that nobody around them expected to hear.
Knowing you're in your final moments on earth can trigger all sorts of emotions: Fear, relief, sadness, anger and of course, regret. You might think of words left unsaid, deeds left undone, or the secrets you kept hidden until you couldn't any longer. Someone asked, "What is the most disturbing [end-of-life] confession you've heard?" and more than 2,000 ghosts suddenly appeared.
From massive family secrets to pure criminal acts, many of the responses were unsettling, to say the least. Others were heart-breaking and a few were even funny. Bored Panda has put together a list of the best, for anyone who needs a jump-start to get their house in order before it's too late. We also explore the top regrets that people have before passing away. You'll find that info between the images.
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#1
Mine wasn't disturbing, but my mom said her piece and apologizes to my brother and sisters, but not to me. That hurt.
We often hear that nobody regrets working too hard when facing the final curtain. So what do most people ponder at the very end of their life?
Grace Bluerock is a social worker who spent six years working in hospice care. She says what she heard and saw taught her so much about the meaning of life. Many of those she comforted were trying to make peace with their time spent on earth.
"Although each person's life story was unique, certain disappointments were expressed time and time again," reveals Bluerock.
The number one regret patients had was that they weren't loving enough to the people who mattered most.
"Many people expressed sorrow for not having been more understanding, caring, and present for the people who were important to them," says Bluerock. "They wished they had the courage to say 'I love you' more often."
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#2
I don’t know about disturbing, but sad. My grandfather was a successful engineering major at Purdue University who went on to become a naval officer and reconnaissance photographer (on spy planes) during the Korean War. Life was looking up.
After he got out, he and my grandmother moved to the new Chicago suburbs and bought a house that is still there to this day (Zillow estimate shows a seven-figure valuation). He got into electric motor sales at a company called Bodine Electric and rose up to VP of Sales very quickly, before the 50s were over. Well, Mr. Bodine had a couple sons who would be taking over the company, and that didn’t sit right with my grandfather who wanted to be President of the company. So, he quit.
They moved to a small rural town in Indiana where he thought he’d open an engineering supply and distribution company. That failed, and so did his 4 later companies. He went bankrupt owing money all over town. He went on social security disability due to some nebulous and largely unfounded claims of back problems supported by the local town physician, and my grandmother went back to work to support the family as a school teacher on one income and his SSD. My dad and his siblings grew up poor and put themselves through school working at the local steel mill, etc.
He lived in that small, poor town for the rest of his life sitting in a chair watching tv from the 1960s on. On his deathbed in 2011, he whispered to my grandmother, loud enough for all his children and grandchildren still to hear, “We should’ve stayed in Chicago.”.
#3
No confession but about 12 hours before he died (somewhat unexpectedly) my dad said “mother” a few times and my mom (his wife) got annoyed that he called her that instead of her name. I watch enough hospice nurse TikTok that I immediately assumed it meant he was going to d*e. Several months later, I asked my aunt, my dad’s sister, what he called their mom when they were kids, and she said he always called her mother.
The second most popular regret was similar to the first.
"The people I worked with often regretted taking their families for granted," Bluerock says. "After all, once they got terminally ill, it was their families who stuck by them to hold their hand, provide love and companionship, and care for them around the clock."
The third is one many of us were expecting to pop up: "I wish I never spent so much time working." Bluerock reveals that many of her patients admitted to working long, hard hours, and in doing so, ended up missing some of the important moments in their kids' lives."
#4
The last words my grandmother said to my mom were “you always took such good care of me, it’s a shame I’ve always hated you”.
#5
Not really a confession but my dad and I had a really fractured relationship - his wife had told him to choose her or me, and he'd chosen her and sent me to live with my mum in another country at a pivotal moment in my life, we didn't speak much after that and it ruined my link with the rest of the family.
He had cancer that spread to his brain, we were basically waiting for him to d*e. I'd gone to see him and he was laying with his arm in a strange position and the damage was causing it to twitch.
We couldn't really chat because he was very much out of it but his arm twitched hitting him in the head and he opened his eyes and very coherently accused me of hitting him. His last words to me were "Did you just hit me?"
No dad, of course not.
#6
When my grandfather was admitted to the hospital and we all got the call from the doctors, my dad was one of the first to make it. Him and his father hadn’t been on great terms ever because of my grandfathers a***e towards him and his mom (my grandma). Since my dad moved out and started a life with my mom, my grandpa went to AA, got sober and tried to fix his relationship with my dad but my dad never let him. He told him multiple times that he’d never forgive him. On his deathbed he seemed a bit out of it and didn’t manage to speak to anyone, but got strength back when it came to my dad. My dad held his hand, told him he forgave him and my grandpa gave a squeeze closed his eyes and passed away.
Bluerock shared a story about one such person—a salesman whose boss expected him to travel three weeks each month, despite him having a young daughter at home.
"Although he was an excellent provider for her, he never got to know her well," the social worker revealed. "As she became older, he tried to form a relationship with her, but it was too late to make up for lost time. He never fully forgave himself for choosing time at work over time with her."
#7
My sister in law told her husband that she loved him. It really screwed him up very badly as he has spent their whole marriage believing that she had settled for him and that he was just a means for her to escape from her home situation.
A lopsided relationship to say the least. He couldn't believe that she finally said it and then she was gone.
He called my husband, her brother, in shock and disbelief. It was extremely heartbreaking.
#8
My grandfather, although he didn't d*e at that moment; the Alzheimer's zeroed out his clock, and I saw it happen. We were discussing cowboy stuff, talking man-to-man for the first time with me as an adult, and he looked me square in the eyes and said, "Somewhere in the jungle, there's about eight d**d [slurs] buried with a bunch of pipes used to beat them to d***h; I didn't do it, I just helped bury it when I was deployed."
And then the lights went out for good, and he never finished his Camel. All that I'd ever seen him smoke were menthol, chosen as a courtesy to my grandmother, until that day and he ripped the filter off like he'd done it a thousand times, even if I'd never seen him do it once.
#9
My grandfather... well, its more what he didn't say. He was a wonderful man. Always wanted to chat, ask you how you were doing... talk about anything. When he was on his d***h bed, his body literally falling apart... he was there, awake. He could barely keep his eyes open. But when he saw us, there was a weak smile, and his eyes followed us. He could barely breath. He tried so hard to speak. I could see his lips trying to form words. But I never managed to hear what it was he was trying to say. Knowing my grandpa, he was trying to ask us all about our day, and how we were doing, what we were looking forward to, or had done that week... as he lie there dying in front of us. He never thought of himself. His family and friends were the ones that mattered most. It still breaks my heart that we couldn't have that one last conversation... I just... couldn't understand him.
Bronnie Ware also worked in palliative care for many years, and went on to write an international bestselling memoir about the top five regrets people have at the end of life. The expert says that people grow a lot when faced with their own mortality.
"I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth," Ware wrote. "Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance."
Ware says that when questioned about any regrets they had, or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. However, she adds that thankfully, every single patient found their peace before they departed.
#10
My second husband. He spent the last six months in a hospital bed in our living room with als. Just before he died he confessed that a lot of our arguments in later years of marriage were actually deliberately caused so he had an excuse to drink. Mental cruelty from an alcoholic . He tried to destroy me so he could drink with a clear conscience.
#11
Not really a confession, but my grandmother was dying and she forgot how to speak English. She spent her teenage years in a concentration camp and at the end of her life only spoke German and thought she was back there. Every time she was lucid she thought she was in the camp. We are in Canada now and none of the staff spoke German so I spent a lot of time translating. I was very young so it was quite the task for me. I look back and I am proud of myself for being up to the task. Her last words were "I don't want to go there. I don't want to burn them. They smell so bad. Where is my mother? Mommy?" And then she held my hand and cried until she fell asleep again, and then passed in her sleep.
#12
Not quite a d***h bed confession but I had a 100 year old WWII vet tell me an interesting story once.
Him and 3 other guys were checking houses and inside one of the houses were 2 N**i Doctors. Upon further inspection they found 2 American soldiers that the doctors had been draining blood from so they could use it for injured N**i's.
They tied up the n**i Doctors, untied the soldiers and grabbed a bottle of alcohol. They shot the n**i Doctors in the stomach and stood over them drinking the alcohol watching them suffer until they died.
According to Ware, the most common regret her patients shared was that they hadn't been true to themselves. "I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me," they'd say in their final days.
The expert explains that when people realise that the end is near, and they look back at their live, many realize just how many dreams have gone unfulfilled.
"It is very important to try and [honor] at least some of your dreams along the way," she warns. "From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few [realize], until they no longer have it."
#13
My grandpa recorded the tape to be played after his d***h. I heard it decades before that.
After the women in his family were m******d by Nazis in Poland, he (was still a young child) and his dad were able to escape to a nearby forest. He doesn't know how old he was or how long they hid but his dad went blind during that time. He mentioned he thought he was around 10.
At some point the resistance found him and his dad hiding in the forest. The resistance reclaimed the town and wanted to bring them out from the forest. Once in town they brought my grandfather to the father and son that m******d his family.
The resistance leader told him this was his only chance at retribution. My great grandfather being blind couldn't do it. They handed my grandpa a g*n. He k****d them both. Only time I heard him cry and he never told anyone because he was scared he'd go to jail for it. .
#14
Not one specific confession but for a number of years I worked in adult care. I did a bit of everything, including end of life care and caring for people with dementia.
My country had a period of civil war between the 60s all the way up until the late 90s.
A lot of people confessed to m*rders and acts of t*******m. The dementia patients didn’t so much confess directly but rather got confused and thought they'd just committed it.
One man stands out the most because he had a combination of dementia and serious mental health issues. Would often scream about it, break down in tears about planting a b**b outside of a bar where people had died.
#15
Once visited the father of a friend who was in hospital with Sepsis, didn't look good. This was about 6 or 7 years ago.
He started talking about some old business that he ran in the 80's, some chemical firm when he just casually admitted that many of the employees got really sick or even died from the exposure to said chemicals, that he knew about it at the time but - in his words - "Things were different back then".
He knew his employees could d*e from working for him and he didn't give a s**t because he didn't have to.
The kicker is he survived and still lives to this day.
Just like Bluerock, Ware says that working too much was often right there near near the top of the list. Especially with her male patients. In fact, she says every man that she nursed said the same thing: They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship.
"Women also spoke of this regret," reveals Ware. "But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."
#17
Mine wasn't disturbing, but gut wrenching. When I was 20 my dad died in my arms after a long fight with metastasised cancer. The only other person that was there with him at the time was his mother, my grandmother, who had travelled across the globe to see him one last time before he passed, and just happened to be there when it happened.
Unfortunately 5 years after that, she developed dementia, which set in REALLY quickly. So now it was us going over to see her one last time before she passed. By the time we got there, she was so far gone that she didn't even remember being there with me when her son died. She kept calling my brother in law by my name (he does look rather similar to me) and kept asking me if i was the new nurse coming to look after her. It hurt me so deeply to know that the only person who had been with me during my dad's passing didn't remember it and didn't know who i was.
My sister and I sat next to her to have a photo taken. She grabbed my hand with such a firm grip i thought she might break the bones in her own hand, looked me d**d in the eyes and said "you've grown up to look exactly like your father. He would be so proud to see the young man you've become. I'm so glad you were there with him at the end, I'm sure that helped bring him some light in the darkness". She then drifted back into the glazed over, confused dementia mindset, and passed away within the hour.
That absolutely f****d me up and without intentionally meaning to (she couldn't hear what my grandma was saying), my mum got photos of the exact moment my resolve broke and I started blubbering like a child. My mum was confused as to what had happened as my sister, who had heard it and started crying soon after too, refused to tell her, saying it was up to me to talk about it when I was ready. Took me months of therapy to process that and be able to talk about it.
#18
My dad didn't leave his first wife. She found a new man and didn't tell him. One day, he walked in and the new man threw him out.
Years later, one of the relatives said the new man did not-so-good things to my dad's daughters. But because of our culture and the family's reluctance to open old wounds: I only heard about it when my aunt passed away.
Another regret many people take to the grave is that they didn't always express how they truly felt. Ware says many patients admitted to suppressing their feelings in order to keep peace with others. In some cases, this was the very reason they ended up getting sick.
"They settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming," she adds. "Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."
#19
My grandfather was a sweet old guy. But he was born in 1919 and had a hell of a life. I didn’t learn until after he was gone that he was a zoot suit-wearing pachuco g*ngster in his youth, and he was known for keeping his neighborhood safe.
When he was dying, he told me there was a g*n hidden in his house and he wanted me to take it. In his youth, there had been a guy in the neighborhood who was beating his wife, and everyone knew about it. The woman finally came to my grandfather and asked for help. He and his buddies went to the guy’s house in the middle of the night, the wife let them in, and they beat the s**t out of him in his bed. Then my grandfather stuck the g*n in the guy’s mouth and told him to forget about his wife and leave town that day, and if they ever saw him again, it would be the last time. After that, he hid the g*n in his basement and forgot about it for 50 years. Sure enough, after he was gone, we found an ancient revolver down there.
Not that disturbing of a story, really, but it was a shock to me, because he had always just been the sweet old guy who told me dumb jokes. And really, I think your average person doesn’t get to hear that many deathbed confessions.
#20
My friend is an only child. When her uncle( dad's older brother) passed he confessed to the whole family that she was infact his own daughter. Wrecked her and the dad up pretty bad and he was going through chemo too. .
#21
Not exactly 'on her deathbed', but my Nana. She had a friend way back when. My mom remembers being around 20 and coming in from the store with her mother to put away groceries when Nana stopped at said "I have to call Carol." Nana called Carol only to find out that Carol had just gotten home from the doctor where she had been diagnosed with cancer. The cancer that k****d her.
When Nana got older, she moved in with us as mom was the oldest child. She lived there for about a year, then had to go into a nursing home due to the level of care she needed. She complained one day that she had been stuck in a closet and left there - turns out it was a sauna they used for breathing treatments. The next day my mom went to visit her - daily occurrence actually. Nana told her she had to get ready because Carol was coming that evening to pick her up and made mom leave. She died that night.
Funny thing - when the home called around two in the morning, Dad told her she had donated her body and the school would pick her up in the morning. This was before the hold button was common, so they set the phone down to talk. "We can't leave her in the room, her roommate might wake up before they get her." "We don't have any empty rooms, do we?" "Just the storage closet." "That will have to do." They couldn't understand why my dad was laughing when they picked the phone back up - Nana's premonition was in full force that week!
A number of Bluerock's patients wished they'd taken more risks before the final curtain call. They admitted that a fear of failure had caused them to play it too safe.
"They knew that they could have had richer, more fulfilling lives had they taken some risks and disturbed the status quo," she reveals. The expert suggests that everyone makes list of everything they've ever wanted to experience in life - while you still can.
"Then start crossing them off one by one and watch your happiness (and your comfort zone) expand dramatically," she says.
#22
My wife's great aunt. Was an elementary school teacher, never married, lived with her "roommate" their entire adult lives.
Finally admitted they were more than roommates, but never were intimate for her fear they would not go to heaven.
Imagine 60 years together with the love of your life and never having physical intimacy for fear of going to hell.
#23
My husbands grandfather confessed that one of his SIL's (sister of his wife) children was his.
However, this was something his children had long suspected and the confession only came after his son (my husbands uncle) was asking about it just before the grandfather died.
#24
I always imagined there would be a clarifying moment where my mum would have a chance to say some stuff on her d***h bed - she was battling cancer.
But the disturbing part is the disease suddenly stripped her of the ability to walk, talk coherently, or even get out of bed/reposition herself she was perfectly normal one moment until suddenly that…
We were told this is it and she was unable to express herself properly as she slipped further and further away over a few days…
I still don’t understand what happened there. But it was certainly disturbing….
#25
My Nina (grandmother) passed when I was 12, my mom was by her side through the last week of life, she passed from a rare cancer. My mom always says my Nina looked at her and said “I will never get to see my babies grow up.” Talking about myself and my cousin. I am now 34 married and pregnant with my second and I think all the time “I wish my Nina was here to see this.” I am lucky enough to have had my other grandparents alive though all my big events but something about her missing all these big things and knowing she wasn’t ready to d*e breaks my heart years later!
#26
OK, this isn't disturbing. You might, in fact, find it uplifting, or even funny.
When my mom was in the hospice at the end of her life, we were chatting away. We'd had a fractious relationship in my teens - she'd been battling mental illness for most of my life, and self-medicated with alcohol. She could be extremely unpleasant, easily led by the papers, and horrendously racist.
Her racism was curious. She knew *and loved* various people of colour. My nan's Sikh nextdoor neighbours. My best friend and her Jamaican parents. But she treated them like the exception, rather than the rule. When I was 11, she tried to make me promise that I would never marry a black man. She repeatedly went on how black men got white girls hooked on d***s, and forced them into p**********n.
So, imagine my surprise as she lay on her deathbed on her last lucid day, and said, "You know, I used to be ever so prejudiced, but it's silly. People are just people".
F*****g hallelujah, it only took 76 years (and I imagine increased exposure to more non-white folks via the NHS). I said it probably didn't help with nan being the way she was (again, loved her neighbours, but would break out the most horrendous racist slurs against black people) - and my mom had no idea. She'd literally never registered nan's behaviour. I think those awful attitudes were just so common amongst my nan's generation.
As my mom lay actively dying, she groggily apologised to me, saying that I shouldn't have to see her d*e. I told her that she was a good mom, the best mom - which was bollocks, but f**k it, I still loved her and wasn't going to make her last hours on earthmore miserable than they needed to be.
I said, "I love you"
She said... "I know".
SHE HAN SOLOED ME THEN DIED.
She also died the day Boris shut the pubs for the pandemic, which is possibly the most on-brand thing she ever did.
#27
My grandma is an er doctor and she had a patient who coded. He woke up screaming saying he was in hell and wanted to confess to drowning his kid in the 70s and the kid was buried underneath the family pond that they built on top of it.
Grandma submitted a report about this but she says you never know if these people are on d***s or telling the truth. She does believe he was somewhere since our soul don’t stay on earth while patients code (she said over 45 years of medical practice she had a lot of patients tell her that we floated above you and saw everything you guys were doing to their body then went up or down - I assume heaven or hell - so she does believe souls float and go somewhere since it seems to be common reoccurrence).
Idk if she believed his story but I know this incident deeply disturbed her because she still talks about the guy who grabbed her arm admitting that and had to get hospital security because he wouldn’t let go.
#28
My grandfather was put up for adoption by his aunts and uncles after his parents died when he was a little boy, and they blamed him, saying he was difficult. On his deathbed he lamented that no one had wanted him. His family put him in there, no one ever adopted him because they preferred babies over 3-5 year olds, and as soon as he was old enough the orphanage put him out on the street. Despite having a good life in adulthood and starting a large family of his own, he carried the weight of feeling unwanted the entire time.
#29
Near-d***h bed. My father is and was horribly a*****e, and before I cut contact with him a while back he’d had a stroke or some kind of medical emergency overseas while visiting family. Never figured out exactly what it was but he was in a coma for a while and by the time he got home it took over a year in rehab to get him speaking and moving around again. My mom had been able to go over there for a week or so to try and figure out how to get him home, but I ended up having a breakdown from stress and she had to come back to work anyway so she flew back home.
It took another couple months for him to stabilize enough that he could come back. When he got home he briefly had a period of coherence before he started declining again, and I remember him squeezing my hand in the hospital, looking me in the eyes, and saying “it’s your fault she abandoned me there. You k****d me.” He went back under and it took another week for him to come out of the coma. We really thought his last words were gonna be that. And honestly if they had been his last words it would have been fine because then he wouldn’t have tried to k**l me a few years later. I’m glad I won’t be around to hear his actual last words.
#30
One missed call.
My father and I spoke on the phone about once a week. We hadn't talked in close to 2-3 weeks at this particular moment and he tried to reach out on a Friday night. I was out of town visiting friends, at their party, when he called me. I didn't take the call - figured I'd call him back when I returned home on Sunday.
Sunday came and I unpacked, did laundry, etc. 100% forgot to call my father.
Monday, at work, I started with lunch break with "oh, I should call dad and see what he wanted".
I called, phone rang 6-7 times, and my oldest brother picked up. He had just got to the house a few minutes prior to me calling. His exact words were, "Hey Raymond, it's Mike. They found dad this morning, passed away in his bed. Apparently he passed during his sleep last night."
I'll never know what that phone call was.
That's hard to live with.
Always take the call.
Always.
#31
My grandmother (essentially raised me) told me she’d been so hard on me (transphobic, generally overly critical) in the last few years of her life because she thought it would make me handle her d***h easier. I think telling me might’ve been the cruelest part. I used to beg her to stop and just have a regular conversation with me because I missed her and knew we didn’t have infinite time.
#32
I work at a hotel in the marketing department now, but when I first started, I was in the Front Office department. Whenever I had the night shift, it wasn't unusual for sleepless or lonely guests to wander down to the lobby looking for someone to talk to. Some of them just wanted to chat for a few minutes before heading back to their rooms, while others would tell stories about their travels or simply wanted a bit of company.
Most of the time, I didn't mind at all. In fact, some of those conversations were genuinely interesting and helped pass the quiet hours of the night. But there were also times when it became a little frustrating, especially when I was in the middle of preparing reports or trying to finish my end-of-shift paperwork. You'd be focused on your work, and suddenly someone would strike up a conversation that could easily last half an hour. It was part of the job, though, and I eventually got used to balancing being friendly with getting my work done.
One guest, in particular, told me a story so harrowing I completely lost track of what I was doing. For a moment, I forgot all about the reports that needed to be done before dawn.
The year before, his wife of ten years had died suddenly from an undetected brain tumor, leaving him to raise their four young children alone. Their marriage had been arranged by both families long before they were old enough to understand what marriage even meant. But he hadn’t minded. She was beautiful, lively, and someone he could build a life with. He was ready to settle down.
On her deathbed, she made a confession that shattered him. She told him she had never truly been in love with him. Before they were married, she had loved someone else, but her parents had forced her into the marriage. She went along with it, hoping her feelings would change.
For many years, she tried to move on. She tried to love him, her husband. And she thought she had convinced him she did. She stayed, raised their children, and played the part of a devoted wife and mother. But deep down, she knew that her heart had always belonged to someone else. Eventually, she reached a point where she couldn’t pretend anymore.
Only three years into the marriage, just after their first child was born, she started seeing her former love again. Secretly. Carefully. The poor guy never suspected a thing. Or maybe he did and just didn’t want to face it. Either way, she kept up the illusion. Right until she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
In the end, with d***h approaching, she told him the truth. She said she couldn’t leave this world without being honest. That she had tried, really tried, to love him, but never could. That she had never stopped loving the other man. And that there was a possibility that one, maybe even two, of their four children weren’t his, but her lover’s.
She died shortly after. And just like that, his entire world collapsed. He grieved not just for the woman he lost, but for the love he thought they’d shared. And as for the identity of the other man, she never told him. She took that secret with her, along with the answer to which of their children might not be his, to her grave.
He had never told anyone else. Not until that night, when he couldn’t sleep and wandered down to the lobby for a smoke. He asked me for a lighter, and somehow, that small gesture opened the floodgates. I never asked why. Maybe it had all become too heavy to carry alone. Maybe he just needed to say it out loud, to someone he didn’t even know. Someone who wouldn’t judge and wouldn’t ask questions. Someone who just listened.
He just needed to be heard.
#33
My father confessed to my mother and me that he cheated on her and had a relationship with another women for about 16 years now, and they had a child together. He passed away a few moments after that, I never got the chance to meet my half-sibling who probably don't even know I existed.
#35
Idk that mine is particularly disturbing, but it does come to mind for me sometimes. When I was like 10 and my grandma was passing away on her deathbed, my mom took us to see her one last time because she was in really poor health and pretty out of it mentally. She wasn't herself anymore, not cruel or acting oddly or anything, just obviously tired and struggling to speak. She was normally the most happy/bubbly type of person imaginable so you could see the difference right away and knew something was wrong. But I can remember my mom talking to her so gently while we were there and basically saying "We know how much you love us, and you know how much we love you." - and Grandma just nodded along looking off in the distance. But then she turned her head at one point to look over at us, and when she locked eyes with me and my brothers, her face just lit up with the kindest smile that could have lit up the room. It brings me to tears to think of it even now, but that's how I will remember my Grandma forever. Even in her hardest moment with one foot out the door, she felt true joy when looking at her daughter and grandkids and wouldn't even let the thought of d***h stifle it.
#36
Not so much a confession, but I think it fits. My grandfather drank himself to d***h. He was in and out of the hospital for about 3 years prior to his d***h. In the last months he was in a gurney at home under 24 hour watch/care. I was 21 maybe 22, and took on some of the watch. He came to one morning remarked on the sunrise out the window, said he saw some deer. Then turned straight to me and asked if I’d wheel him out into the woods with his .38 and then leave. I didn’t know how to react, but told him I still had to live with my gramma, his wife. He laughed and said not to worry about it. Learned years later that he had said something similar to my dad and my aunt. Miss that old coot, but d**n that was a lot for me.
#37
Made up names, for reasons, but;
My uncle Frank was a real piece of work. His heart had tried to take him out several times and near the end it was an amalgamation of machine parts and donor valves. But my Aunt Judith still loved him, and they celebrated 60 years of marriage.
Frank took a nasty spill stepping out of an elevator that shattered his clavicle, which had him laid up in a hospital bed. It was a month into his recovery when everything went to hell, his heart was giving out on him. He started slipping in and out of it for days at a time.
Before he passed, he had a lucid night where he asked all the staff where Doris was. He asked my cousins to get Doris. When family would show up, the nurses would mention that he kept asking for Doris.
His friends, his mom, his sister, his wife of 60 years... none of them were named Doris. We still don't know who he was talking about. .
#38
I see a lot of not quite confessions here, so I'll share.
The last time that I spoke to my father he was crying. He had been fighting various health issue for 25 years, including lymphoma which had twice gone into remission. Then he got sick with a cold or flu... and his body just couldn't fight anymore.
He was crying and trying his best to be coherent on the phone with me as he apologized for dying. The only words I could make out, which he repeated a few times were, "I'm so sorry, I can't anymore. I can't fight anymore". I did my best to tell him he'd been fighting so long, it was all okay - I was okay and my sister was okay. He was about 1,000 miles away and I couldn't fly to him, I had to drive. I got to the VA hospital 20 minutes after he was gone.
My father may well have been the best man I've ever known.
#39
When my mum was in hospital, riddled with cancer, I said to her "I know I'm not the daughter you wanted, but I'm the one you got, so shall we talk about it?" And she replied, "I know why you are the way you are" but wouldn't elaborate and pretended to be asleep.
Since she died, I've had dreams where she's trying to tell me something but it's muffled or like she's speaking under water and gets annoyed with me that I can't make out what she's saying.
#40
I always told my grandma I wanted to have 4 boys. At the time when she was dying (very unexpectedly) I only had 1 child, a boy. She was struggling to breathe and said “I’ll never get to meet your 4 boys….”
I still think about it often. I have 3 boys now.
#41
I used to work hospice, had one dude just about sit up and asked "where are they?". His kids lived across the country and were not very present, but evidently they were who he was talking about.
#42
My extremely devout Catholic grandfather consfessed on his deathbed that he and my grandmother had used birth control. What a sinner he was, being all responsible.
#44
My friends grandad, on his deathbed, told his children that it was actually their mother who cheated and caused the end of the marriage, not him. He moved away after the divorce and allowed them to think he was the one who had cheated their entire lives, so that it wouldn’t cause a problem with their mother while she raised them. Meanwhile, he had been vilified by his kids and blamed his entire life. And the mom just went along with it.
#45
My grandfather waited until everyone left the room except me. He smiled and whispered, "The wrong man went to prison." Then he closed his eyes and never said another word.
#46
It was really the only one. My step-grandfather k****d some men in WW2, which we knew. He became a preacher afterwards, and was a good man.
On his d***h bed we found out that he'd spent the last 60 years desperately trying to atone for m****r, as he was sure he was being d****d to Hell.
#47
This is the opposite of disturbing, but when my grandfather was dying, he confessed to my dad that he was his best friend.
My dad had grown up in a broken home, raised mostly by his mother after an extremely messy divorce due to my grandfather’s violent alcoholism. For the first decade or so of his life, my dad and his father had been extremely close. But after the divorce, my grandfather remarried a woman who had kids of her own, and my dad and his siblings suddenly became background characters in his new life. To his credit, my grandfather did end up getting sober, and became a very involved husband and parent for his second wife and her kids. He avidly supported their dreams and goals, and went out of his way to ensure that they felt seen and loved. But that left my dad feeling like the discarded child for a long time, and he resented the fact that his father could give his new family everything they’d never had, while he and his siblings had been left behind with a mother who did not know how to cope with the anger and hurt from her marriage falling apart.
After my grandfather got sober when my dad was an adult, he made a conscious effort to rebuild that relationship. They both worked in similar fields for a living, so they began collaborating on projects at my grandfather’s home and spending a lot more time together. When my dad married my mom and had kids of his own, my grandfather, his wife, and her children were always a big part of our lives. Every week, my dad would bring me to my grandparents house for a visit, and I absolutely adored getting to see the bond that the two of them shared.
Nevertheless, my dad would have never thought that my grandfather considered him to be his best friend. After all, my grandfather had been married to his wife for almost 50 years, he’d gotten sober for her, he’d rebuilt his entire life for her, and he was a deeply devoted partner who shared all her passions and had truly found his other half. But when my dad disagreed and pointed out that his wife was his best friend, my grandfather shook his head and said “No, she’s not. You are.”
And my dad has kept that secret from my grandma ever since.
#48
I used to be nurse and once we had a patient that had aggressive late stage lung cancer and was actively dying. We knew he had been prison several times and, before cancer took his strenght, was considered really dangerous.
I was giving him his pain medication and when he suddenly said something like ”I still heard the sounds my friends skull made when I splitted it open with hammer. Have you ever k****d anyone? I have used every d**g on earth but there is no better high than k*****g someone and never getting caught. Shame that I get to experience that only once”.
He never spoke to me anything after that and died day or two later.
#50
My Dad was unresponsive the day after I saw him the last time. His vocal cords were breaking down. He clearly said he was proud of me, and called me by my name and said he loved me. I also was able to tell him that I loved him. We had no idea that that would be our last exchange. He was scheduled to leave the hospital the next day. Twelve hours later, he was unresponsive and actively dying.
This isn’t an interesting deathbed situation, but it is beautiful. It is one of the great blessings of my life.
#51
I worked in a Long Term Acute and Critical Care unit( LTACC) and we had one guy who was fully aware and competent but was circling the drain for a long time, coding nearly weekly, but insisted on being a full code. One day after I came back from being off and heard he coded again while I was gone and had several broken ribs on top of his several terminal illnesses I asked him why he kept fighting just to stay here and suffer. He said it was because he believed in God and was a very bad man all his adult life. He didn't say what he did, but that it wasn't with adults.
#52
I have a brain damaged relative. She was tossed off her balcony tied to a chair because people owed her money and she kept asking for it. She wasn’t a credible witness in court(due to brain damage) so guys got off.
Well my dad’s family is not what you call credible people either.
Some time later one of the two; apparently one guy disappeared but the second sometime later ended up in the hospital for reasons and made the d***h bed confession that he did infact try to k**l her.
my mom told me, a long time after this had happened, 30 years plus.
#53
Another one...not necessarily a d***h bed confession, more so it was just very spooky. I worked at a hospice and dementia facility for a little while as a caregiver. The unit I was working, one of the residents was actively dying, something that was very routine and normal in that line of work. We weren't sure when she would pass, it could be any minute or in a day or so. Her hospice nurse was there and her family, she was set up to have a comfortable d***h surrounded by her loved ones.
Well there was another resident that lived a few rooms down from the dying lady. I'll call her Dottie. Well Dottie is the oldest resident in that facility, she is over 100yrs old. There had been many times that we all thought she was on deaths door, but she just kept bouncing back. Well that evening after dinner and checking on my actively dying resident, who was realively stable (her hospice nurse said if she had to guess, she will probably pass sometime the following day but it could be sooner or later, one can truly never know) i went to go assist Dottie with getting ready for bed.
Everything was going as it normally does. Helped her use the restroom, get her dentures cleaned, pjs on. We usually chit chat and have small talk while doing these things. So we are chit chatting as we left her bathroom to get to her bed when she abruptly stopped talking to me and her eyes locked in on someone or something on her bed. I no longer existed to her in that moment. Which not necessarily weird, the woman has dementia and can slip in and out of lucidity...what was weird is the conversation with the entity I couldn't perceive. Dottie's eyes lit up with excitement and joy and she said "oh friend! You have finally come! Is there anything I should pack for our trip!?" There is a moment of quiet, like she is listening to someone telling her something. And then her face got a little sad and the light in her eyes dimmed a little and replied with "oh
...oh dear...oh dear...I see, I understand...are you sure? You can't take me too?...are you sure you're not here for me?" Another moment of quiet and then she said "you promise? You promise you'll come back for me?" After another pause she said sadly "well I suppose you best be on your way then dearie, next time maybe you'll have a room for me" This lady is staring at the bed, like someone is there and her eyes move like they are watching someone stand up and walk past us to the door and as this "person" is passing she is looking up at them and says "I love you too, see you soon!" Finally she like snapped out of that conversation and looked up to me sadly and I asked her if everything is ok? Are you ready to get in bed? And she just nodded and said sleep sounded good. When I got her all tucked in she asked me "did you see him? Did you see him too?" And I said no I think whoever came to visit didn't want me to see them. To which she said "mmm yes probably so, you are too young for him to show himself...he comes to visit often but never for me, he keeps promising that he will be here for me when its right" and I was like "Who is this Dottie?" And she kinda laughed like duh isn't it obvious and was like "That was D***h, I don't know his name besides that one...sounds scary...D***h, he is the furthest thing from scary. But D***h has come tonight, he said he is here for someone else down the hall...why can't he just take me with him? Why do I have to wait so long? I'm tired"
So yea I finish getting her in bed, say goodnight and high tail it over to my actively dying resident and surprise, surprise...she had taken her last breath a few minutes before I walked in.
#54
It was my ex's mom. we were exes when she died. he had never told her. I don't know that it was disturbing just that it was really uncomfortable and I couldn't do anything about it.
we still cared about each other greatly so when his entire family got together to hang out with her in the basement while she was on her d***h bed, he asked me to come and I said okay. I did not know at the time he had not told anyone that we broke up. so there I was with his entire family not as a friend, but as a girlfriend, and just before she passed she wanted to hold my hand and thank me for taking care of her son and making sure that he was okay during this transition. I had no idea what to say. I'm not taking care of your son, he f*****g cheated on me. we're childhood friends and I'm here because I love you, not because I love him
so I just smiled. and then 5 minutes later she died. I guess the most disturbing part was having to process what she just said as I felt the life go out of her body.
#56
My dad told me two days before he died that my sister wasn’t my sister. My mom got pregnant with one of the guys in the neighborhood and my dad covered for it for 50 years. I’m seven years old and I just found out.
#57
When one of my aunts died (I was too young to know her), she told her sister to not let Jay near her girls. Apparently he liked to m****t kids, but no one said anything and that confession stayed a whispered secret that no one acted upon. Well, guess who became his victim and suffered years when my FaMiLy knew something wasn’t right with him. He’s also invited to family parties still and I stay away because why would I want to see that POS again?
#58
I was sitting bedside of my mom. She was pretty out of it because of the cancer. Ireached over and held her hand. She looked at me andnin her clearest voice in a month. SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU BOYCE, I'VE BEEN WAITING A LONG TIME. Then closed her eyes and passed. Boyce was my dad. We looked nothing alike and he passed away in 1967.
#59
The knowledge of what's happening. Have you ever seen a person overstating whats happening right before they do something scary? Wide eyed before they "jump", so to speak. Its courageous, no doubt, but the hesitant acceptance is more disturbing to me than the panic of "im gonna d*e".
What do you think ?
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