From the benign confessions of love to the shocking secrets of double lives, these real-life stories are about the most unsettling last words ever to be overheard.
1. Deal With The Devil
I was looking after an elderly woman who had gone downhill and was on her last legs for about a week. She kept asking me to read the Bible to her, and as soon as I would start, she would scream that he was coming to get her and that he was waiting right behind me. It was very unnerving to hear at 3 AM.
Finally, I asked her who was coming to get her—and her response chilled me to the bone. She said, “The Devil’s coming for me because I let my husband hurt our kids and did nothing”.
2. Guardian Angel
I recently cared for a woman who had multiple acute strokes in a short amount of time. It happened quite fast. Only a week before, she had been independent, riding her horse every day, and still taught part-time at the local school, despite being in her 80s. By the time she got to me, she was completely nonverbal, incontinent, and unable to feed herself.
I had a feeling that she was neurologically intact enough to understand what was going on, so I talked to her as much as I could when I was in the room. I talked to her about her daughters who had called every day, her husband who hadn't called—but I left that part out—the weather, her horses, and her students who had sent a card.
On the last day of my workweek, her daughter from out of state had finally found a flight up. They sat in silence and held hands for hours. Visiting hours ended right at shift change, so I walked in to give a report as the daughter was saying goodbye. The patient then spoke what I knew were going to be her last words. They were heartbreaking.
She said, “I'll always be looking after you". She pointed to her daughter, then at me, and then she fell asleep. Two days later, when I came back to work, I was informed she had passed in the night.
3. It Was Par For The Course
When my grandmother was taken off of life support, my father and grandfather stayed with her that night in the hospital. At around 7 AM, my father left the room to go get breakfast. My grandmother woke up, looked at my grandfather, and said, “Buy the new golf clubs. I love you," and passed.
He and my father had been talking about how my grandfather’s golf clubs were more than 20 years old, and he was thinking about a new set. My grandmother hadn’t been lucid and had barely been conscious for a week at that point.
4. Those Hollywood Nights
I worked in a nursing home for about a decade doing hospice, rehab, and all kinds of long-term care. I had a fellow who had worked at the Army Film Unit in Los Angeles during active combat. Sadly, I had a feeling he wasn't going to last the night, so I decided to sit next to him and have a conversation. He was remarkably lucid the entire time.
He told me that he had been present at the "Zoot Suit Riots". He even admitted to taking a man's life, but he was never prosecuted. I never could find any evidence of anyone having been slain during those five days in LA when the riots took place. But that wasn't all. He also told me about getting frisky with Rosemary Clooney in a bar on Sunset.
5. She Didn’t Give A Hoot
My great-grandmother lived a very long and interesting life. She was in her 20s during the great depression. She had a wild streak from those days that we don’t know much about, to the point that we actually don't know our great-grandfather's name. We only know the husband she took later. Over the course of her nearly 100-year life, she had collected owls.
She had literally thousands of owl figurines and doodads. She had clocks, wall-hangings, potholders, lamps, stained glass art, salt shakers, and more little figurines than you could imagine, all depicting owls. We all wondered what the importance of the owls was. She never talked about them. We just all knew that she loved owls.
When she was nearing the end, at the age of 98 or 99, and the doctors said she had mere days left, my grandparents went and talked to her. They asked her if she had anything she wanted to share or ask before she went. She thought for a moment, then said something that made our jaws DROP: "I never understood the owls". It turned out she didn't really give a darn about owls.
From what we could piece together, sometime in the 40s or 50s, perhaps, she bought either a trivet or a set of salt/pepper shakers that were owls. Then someone got her the other. Those were the oldest owl things anyone could remember. From there, someone got her an owl to match, probably a potholder or a placemat. Then, all of a sudden, her kitchen was owl themed.
From there, it snowballed. Soon, her house was filled with owls. They took over most of her personal belongings—and I guess she was just baffled by it the whole time.
6. She Had Enough Of The Stuff
My dad loved small-town auctions. Over the years, he had collected all those boxes of stuff that would go to the lowest bidder. He amassed quite a collection, filling the garage and a workshop out back. He always promised my mom that he would sell it all someday in some big garage sale or auction of his own.
One day, my mom’s cancer had returned, and the doctors told us this time it wasn’t a fair fight. Two weeks before she passed, I was sitting with her in the hospital. We had run out of things to talk about. She looked up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the pain, and said, “Thank God, at least I won’t have to deal with your dad’s stuff”.
My mom and I just burst out laughing.
7. It Was Lights Out For Grandma
My friend Tom had a grandma who was a real hippie. She had traveled all over the world with three young boys in the 60s. My friend was also a total hippie himself as a teenager and doted on his grandma with all his heart. They spoke about everything in life.
At a ripe old age, she lay on her deathbed in hospital and flatlined with her sons around her. But she wasn't actually gone yet. A few moments later, she freaked everyone out when she let out a gasp and said, "Tell Tom I never saw a light," and took her last breath.
8. His Words Made Me Cry
I was a scrub nurse. My job was to assist the surgeon during surgeries. I was preparing an elderly patient for a pretty high-risk surgery. There was a good chance he was going to be fine, but there was also a decent chance things were going to go south and he knew that.
While the CRNA was doing her thing, getting the anesthesia ready, I was standing next to the patient going over his chart and the signed releases. Then, he said to me, “I need you to tell my wife I’m sorry for all the times I raised my voice at her. There weren’t many times. But right now I wish there weren’t any”.
That was the first time I ever got choked up at the bedside. I so badly wanted to tell him everything was going to be okay but no one knew if it was going to be. So, I said back to him, “I’ll do anything you need me to, but right now let’s think about some happy memories before you go under”.
I asked him to tell me about his and his wife’s first date. I almost lost it right there. Once he was under, I excused myself before scrubbing in to stop myself from crying.
9. One Last Text Message
My husband Frank passed last year. I can’t remember his exact last words. His last few days were terribly stressful for me and he was also losing his faculties where the toxins of cancer in his liver had spread to his brain. But I can tell you his last text message.
This was only fivedays before he passed and the last day he was completely lucid. He was bedridden by that point and would text me from the bedroom if he needed me to pop up and help him with anything. In true Frank style his final message was simply one word: dinner?
I miss cooking for him.
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10. Spending Spree
My friend's grandpa had a reputation for being quite affectionate, yet stoic at the same time. He used to drink and sleep a lot. When the end was near, he asked my friend to come closer. He told him something that left a smile on his face: "I've left a lot of money to you. Life's not worth it. Spend it all. Spend it all on ladies of the night and illicit substances".
He passed about a week later. I don't know if he did spend it on what his grandpa said to, but he did spend it.
11. Dear John
My grandma suffered from dementia for many years before she passed. It got so bad she didn’t remember who any of her family were and would barricade herself in her home because she was scared of everyone. She even forgot she smoked and would find her smokes months later after she would forget where they were and claim she was desperate for one.
The only memories she had left at the end were of her sister being able to play the piano beautifully and that her husband—her childhood sweetheart—was gone, but she didn’t know where. He had passed some time earlier. She spent her days waiting for him to come home from wherever he was.
She would say, “My John will be home soon," or someone would walk past the window, and she would do a double-take and say, “Thought that was my John”. It was heartbreaking watching her deteriorate until she was near the end, unaware of anything or anyone.
I went to say my goodbyes to her in the hospital, and she held my hand and told me how much she loved me but how she was ready to go be with John now. At that moment, she remembered who I was, what was happening to her, and that her husband, my grandad, was gone already.
Not long after that, she closed her eyes forever.
12. He Had A Tale To Tell
When my grandfather's health began to nosedive, he began making some bizarre remarks. He kept referring to a group of people we didn't know. He was telling us a lot of battle stories, as well as the word "Kitchens" over and over. He started talking about “Kitchens," and we just thought it was ramblings and nonsense.
After he passed, when we were cleaning out his house, we came upon an old family book that was handwritten by his grandfather. Its contents shocked us. It was about the Denver bootleggers, focusing on a certain character who managed to run one of the bigger bootlegging operations in the area during the Prohibition era.
Then, we came across some pictures in a box with a bunch of pins and a sash that was from the Masons. The pictures all had my grandfather and his father posing with family members, as well as a random old guy dressed in what can only be described as a 1940s-era suit and hat that made him look like an old-school bandit.
We then found out that there was a house that my aunt used to go to when she was a very young child that was supposedly owned by that old man in the photos. When I did some scoping on the property, it did not have a registered number on the street it resided on. Instead, it was registered as an address that was one block over.
The house had no real address, and it was owned by a company that was run by some guy that my aunt and mom knew to be related to us. At this point, we believed that “Kitchens” was actually a pseudo name for someone my grandfather was associated with within the Masons.
This “Kitchens” fellow may be the man in the photos as well as even the inspiration for the main character in the handwritten book we found buried in the closet.
13. She Was A Wild Thing
One of the most challenging moments I had was with a patient—a woman in her 80s—who had advanced dementia and trying to recover from a severe bed sore that had gone septic. She often confused me with her second husband because, according to her daughter, I looked a lot like him.
The patient would often talk about "our" risqué exploits—including swinging and partner swapping—as well as very wild "adventures". I had given up on trying to tell her I was not her husband because it just confused her and upset her, so I learned to play along.
She talked to me often about "our" children and other family members, as well as many other tamer adventures she had with her husband. It made her happy to talk about it and often left me with a smile.
14. She Knew Something Was Up
When my great-grandma was on her last legs, she was convinced that my mom was having a baby and wanted to know if it was a girl or boy. My mom replied by telling her that she was not pregnant, and after asking the same to my aunt she said, "Oh, guess I was wrong". Here's where it gets unsettling. Exactly nine months later, I was born.
15. He Saw The End Clear As Day
One day, the whole family was with my grandparents. My grandpa had Alzheimer's, and we were practicing the piano together when he suddenly said out of nowhere, "I'm going to die soon, but it's so nice that we gathered here today and are able to see each other one last time".
I just told him not to worry and assured him I'd be back the following Sunday. My grandfather had a cerebral hemorrhage the next day and went into a coma. He was in a coma for four days before he would finally leave this earth. I believe that on that particular day, he knew for one last time who he really was, who we were, and that his end was coming soon.
16. It Was All Hard To Accept
My friend had a patient who was hours from the end. He told her, “The only thing I regret in life is not telling my baby boy that I accept him”. It didn’t hit hard until she was told that the patient’s son was a transgender male. Sadly, the man lost his life at just 50 years old to terminal cancer, and he never got a chance to tell his son that.
17. His Tormented Past Caught Up With Him
My partner's grandfather never spoke about his WWII service. He joined after lying about his name and age, so we couldn’t find any records, but he would have been 16 years old. He was in the Pacific somewhere, and when he got back, his lie was exposed.
Because he was 18 by then, he was drafted under his real name and promptly taken into custody. He was going to do anything he could not to get sent back to fight, so he got trashed and self-harmed. His adult life was mostly spent under the influence and being a terrible husband and father.
However, in his later years, he was able to do some good. Having grandkids softened him. In his last hours, he relived his time in the service. It was so tragic—I'll never forget it. He said, “Oh God, they are here. The Japanese are behind us, sir. Get him. Get him. Jab him. Help! Medic!"
He also had a string of names he kept saying. He had such a tormented, broken mind.
18. His Confession Didn’t Change Anything
My father made a terrible confession. He told me and my mother that he had swiped my mother's wedding jewelry a couple of years earlier and sold it to invest in stocks he thought were a sure thing. He lost all the money. Everybody in the family had blamed my oldest brother because he had a bad gambling addiction, and he had taken stuff from everyone multiple times before.
We never told anyone about this. Years later, everyone still thinks it was my brother.
19. Beasts Of Burden
I worked at a hospital in a small town near Munich. My job there was not fancy at all. I moved people around, threw out the trash, and occasionally did some maintenance work. I got to see a lot of patients come and go. I remembered a few instances of people confessing to me their biggest regrets. There were two that stood out.
One was a Polish lady who told me that she used to be a lady of the night during WWII. She said that she slept with "very high up" people in the government. She told me that although she did not regret that part of her life, she could not tell anyone about it either. She told me that was a heavy emotional burden on her. But that wasn't all.
She also told me that she aborted more than five babies during that time. The other was an old truck driver who used to work for an Eastern German company. He told me that he once ran over some kids with his truck but was too afraid to stop and check if they were alright.
20. Family Rivalry
One of the hospice workers had a patient who was a bed-bound woman in her 90s. For the most part, she was unresponsive—but on the rare occasion, she'd become shockingly lucid. It’s hard to gauge the level to which unresponsive patients are detached from their surroundings, so they encourage family members to keep them company in hopes of soothing the patient.
This patient was from a US state that prided itself on its state university and the university’s football team. The woman’s family had attended this university for four or five generations. During her hospice care, however, her great-granddaughter was the first in their family to decide to go to a different school—the rival state’s university.
Her family was supportive of her decision but often joked about her being the “rebel” or “Judas” or what-have-you. One day, they were all sitting around the woman’s bedside, teasing the girl about her decision. Suddenly, the patient sat up, looked at her great-granddaughter—and uttered an unforgettable last word. She said, “Traitor,” and then bit it.
21. A Special Last Day
I worked with the elderly at a day center. A 90-something-year-old man who was very loved by everyone was going to use euthanasia—which was permitted in our country—that afternoon.
All the nurses and social workers were pretty emotional on his last day. It can be weird to talk to someone in the morning, knowing they will end their lives that afternoon. I accompanied him on one final stroll. I was pushing his wheelchair, and we just talked about life. In that one hour, he taught me so much about life.
He told all about his experience from WWII, how it affected him, and how he overcame it. He never told anyone, not even his wife, about everything that happened. He gave me so many life lessons that day, and I will always be thankful for that.
22. Nunsense
My great aunt was a nun. When she met my wife before we got married, she point-blank asked if we were already doing the deed. I sheepishly replied yes, waiting to be chastised for having pre-marital relations. Her response shocked me. She replied, “Good, it is important to know the quality of the product before you buy it”.
It was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard coming from a 90-year-old nun dressed in a full habit.
23. Coming To America
My grandmother was from Spain. At some point in my life, I was like, "Why don't I know how to speak Spanish?" So, I asked my mom since I had never heard her speak Spanish either. She said, "My mom came to America and was one of the 'we are in America now, so we speak English now' people".
When we started pestering her to teach us Spanish, she claimed that she had forgotten how to speak it. We all suspected that she was lying through her teeth, but she wouldn't relent. She was sharp as a tack until her mid-90s and lived alone.
Finally, we had to move her to our house and then to assisted living because she wanted to be closer to her friends. When she ended up in a nursing home because she was on her last legs and her mind started to go, we caught her speaking Spanish to the primarily Hispanic staff.
She basically had to go senile to forget that she told us that she couldn't speak Spanish. It was an unintentional confession that she always knew how to speak the language, but she just didn't want to because it wasn't the American thing to do.
24. A Final Send-Off
On the night before he passed, I received a chilling e-mail from my stepfather. In general, he was always in pain from chemo, cancer, medication, and whatnot. He did not want to continue spending money as he withered away.
He asked me to never tell the rest of the family, "I'm taking all my sleeping pills tonight after your mom goes to bed. With luck, she'll never know the truth. It would break her".
After that, he was gone.
25. Fake Name
This is a light-hearted one: When my great-grandmother's health was failing, she told my mom that she’d been using a fake name since she was 13.
There’s no big, exciting reason for it. She just thought that her original name was ugly and old-fashioned, so when she left home to work in another town, she decided to reinvent herself with a trendier, more stylish name: Ethel.
26. There Was Nothing More She Needed To Say
I walked into my mom's room, and she was just sitting in her chair with her head tilted and looking off into the distance. After a minute, she looked at me, smiled, and said, "Well, that's it then, there's nothing more to do". She wasn't very lucid at the time, so I just carried on with our visit, and when they brought her supper, I told her goodnight.
A few hours later, the nurse called me and said that she had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. I held her hand while she passed, but she never said anything more.
27. His Last Words Were The Key To My Devastation
My husband had a cardiac event that required an ambulance. As the ambulance was arriving, I asked him what the code to open his phone was. I repeated some numbers, and he confirmed them. Then, he looked up at me and said something that made my stomach drop.
He mumbled, "I am so sorry". He had a successful surgery but had several strokes on the operating table and was taken off life support after seven days. When I opened his phone, tears sprang to my eyes. I found out he was having an affair.
The same code to his phone also opened his laptop, where I found telephone recordings of him and his girlfriend, as well as screenshots of their chats. It was absolutely devastating to me.
28. The Train Finally Left The Station
I once cared for a man who was in the hospital because of his cancer. He was partially paralyzed from the waist down. On one occasion, I dropped by his room for his visit. I noticed that he looked more down than usual. So I sat next to him and let him talk.
He said that he was done living, and he didn’t want to be in the hospital. At the end of the conversation, he said, “I wish a train would pass by”. Ten minutes after my shift was over, he passed. It wasn’t and still isn’t obvious what caused him to go right then. For all we know, he couldn’t get to the train, so the train got him.
Wikimedia Commons, Vince pahkala
29. The Big Reveal
My aunt watched her elderly mother fall down the stairs. Just before she lost her life, she made a shocking confession. She revealed that she wasn't my aunt's biological mother. She told my aunt that her oldest sister was actually her mother.
The sister had gotten pregnant too young, and the mom said it was hers, which was a common way of handling it back then. She revealed it in her very last breath.
30. Was She Guilty?
While on her final legs, my grandma confessed to taking someone's life. Usually, you’d think it was the pain relief meds, but she was such an eccentric—it was actually believable. We traced all her ex-husbands, partners, and any other likely candidates. Fortunately, none of them had gone missing or met any type of untimely passing.
However, sometimes, I wonder.
31. Special Delivery
During my childhood, my mother was in charge of a nursing home. From the ages of five to ten, I spent every weekend with residents. Because I was a kid, residents often confessed stuff they thought I wouldn’t understand. Two stick out. One funny, one not.
One woman who was about 96 was nearing the end. She had her last burst of energy/life where she thought she was better. A Black delivery man came in with some flowers. After he left, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “I can’t believe I’m dying without having been with a colored man”.
The other occurred while I was reading Bible verses to a resident. Suddenly they said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to drop that baby in the well”.
32. He Wasn’t Worth The Money
My great-grandfather was a terrible man. He had left home at just eight years old and fended for himself for his entire life. He beat his children, and I assume he did the same to his wife. She left him and the kids behind. This occurred during the 30s, so I assumed that he didn't allow her to take the kids with her, especially since women’s rights were not great back then.
While on his last legs, my nasty great-grandpa began to feel lonely. He told his boys that he had a bunch of money stashed on the old property and that if they went to see him, he would tell them where it was. But it was already too late. No one went.
33. The Final Piece To The Puzzle
My mom was adopted. My grandparents raised her as though she was their biological kid. They were also very open and didn't keep it a secret. When she was growing up, she tried to find out as much as she could about her and her adopted brother’s birth parents. Back in those days though, information like that wasn’t exactly the easiest to find.
My mom and uncle were brought to the orphanage with little to no information on each of their biological parents, or it was requested to be kept secret. Eventually, my mom found enough information from notes she had gathered, like which families might have been most likely to be related to her, some property information that one can find at the library, etc.
She sort of pieced this puzzle together about her life. At a certain point, she was able to get the names of her mother and her brother’s mother. She was able to find out she was part of a big family, with lots of brothers and sisters. However, for my uncle, he found out that his mother had passed not long after placing him for adoption.
By the time she had gathered all of this information, my mom was married, had my older sister, and was pregnant with me. Somehow, she got a phone number. That phone number went to the house of her biological mother. She called, and the voice of a young boy answered.
My mom asked for the name she knew, and she heard, “Yeah, one second. Hey Mom, phones for you”. The woman and my mother spoke. It wasn’t an easy conversation. This woman was not comfortable with my mom contacting her at all.
She didn’t ask my mom a lot of questions, but my mom said that she was just going to talk, and if she wanted to hang up at any point, she could. My mom gave her a short version of the story of her life, and then the conversation was over.
After that, my mom’s biological mother would send letters to her on occasion, but she made a point of telling my mom she could never be found out by the rest of her family. This woman carried that secret with her until the day she was about to leave the earth.
While on her last legs, one of her daughters asked her, “Will you tell us where you went when you went away that time?" The woman finally confessed that she had gone to a home for unwed mothers all those years ago to have my mom, who was the child of her affair with the milkman.
34. A Haunting Confession
My perfect mother said she was harmed by her older cousin and named him when she was a small child. I didn't ask her to go into details, and she passed a few hours after telling me. I never told anybody, not even my dad, who later passed. I have no idea if he even knew. I'm afraid this was something my mom held inside and suffered alone with her whole life.
It hurts and haunts me to think that.
35. He Finally Gave Up The Goods
I worked for a federal law enforcement agency. We covered major offenses, some of which were related to organized syndicates, not Mafia per se, but open-ended illicit enterprises. We had a mid-level player as a suspect for a string of cargo thefts, heists, etc. We knew him for years and had taken him into custody several times.
He taunted us a fair bit, but lung cancer got a hold of him before we could build a solid case. Things went downhill fast. We went to see him at home, just before he transferred to hospice. That he did at least half of what we suspected was an open secret. I knew it and he knew it. For whatever reason, he chose to give me a break.
He said, “If I give you something, will you sit on it for a few weeks”? Initially, I could not agree, but he assured me that it could wait, so I agreed. He told me, “I know that you are looking at me, but I didn’t do it”. He admitted wanting to do the job, then told me who was actually responsible and where we could find solid evidence to implicate 5–6 people.
When I asked him why he decided to tell me, he said, the other guy “never treated anybody right”. I did not ask him to elaborate. I shared the information about three weeks later, after the informant passed. However, I never had to share information about the source because he pointed us to substantial corroborating evidence.
36. The Right Track To A Tragic End
There was a gentleman nearing the end who was 56 years old. He was mad and yelling that he started at an early age going to preschool, to get into the right grade school, to get into the right high school, to get into the right Ivy League university, and to finally get a high-paying job.
That was the year he was supposed to set up his family for life, being able to fund their college and pay off the mortgage. This went on for about four hours before he passed. It was truly tragic.
37. He Just Wanted To Go
When my uncle was 13, he had a brain tumor and was hanging on for dear life. My grandmother was a mess. She refused to leave the hospital, but he insisted she go home to eat and take a shower. He was paralyzed at that point—it was pretty horrific.
As soon as she got home the phone rang and he had passed. My mom said the nurses told them he was holding on because she was there. He didn’t want to go while she was with him because it would be hard on her. The nurses said a lot of patients do that.
38. Who's The Father?
My paternal grandfather revealed that two of the children he raised with his wife were not his biologically. My father and his younger sister were the results of two of my grandmother's many affairs. To make it worse, my grandfather would not name the biological fathers.
39. I Didn’t Do It!
I had an uncle who was a heavy drinker and just known for being a bit crazy—wild, not mentally unwell, although I suspected the latter was also true. The morning after a family party, a mattress in the house was found. It reeked like someone had used it as a toilet.
No one knew who the culprit was, and he naturally got the blame, though he vehemently denied it. His last words while he was near the end were, “It wasn’t me that peed the bed!" It had clearly bothered him for years that he had been blamed for that, which was a minor thing compared to the many other things he had done!
40. A Regretful Choice
I had a patient who was perfectly fine. But when I came back the next night, they'd taken a turn for the worse. They'd had a massive stroke mid-morning. The family had decided against surgery due to age factors and other things. The wife was telling me they had a good life together and had been married for about 40–50 years. She kept vigil at the bedside all night.
All the kids and grandkids were there too. I told them although the patient was unconscious, they could still hear. So, I encouraged the family to keep talking to them and tell them everything they wanted to say before it was too late. Around 4 AM, I could tell the patient was close to the end, and the wife asked me if it was time.
I gave her an honest answer, and she became inconsolable, clutching the patient’s hand. She kept crying that she wasn’t ready to say goodbye, that she had so many other plans for them to live out. She said that she didn’t want them to go, and she wished she hadn’t withdrawn treatment so that they could have more time together.
The patient passed 15 minutes later.
41. Making Amends
I had one male in his 90s talk about how he had been a part of a prejudiced group in his youth and how ashamed he was of disturbingly mistreating people of color and even some white Catholics. He'd had several CNAs and patient care techs who were minorities, and he was always polite and even loving towards them. I could tell how deeply his past haunted him.
He asked me not to share this information with any of the staff. In the last days before he became too weak to speak anymore, he asked one of the African-American RNs I worked with if she forgave him. She didn’t know what he was asking forgiveness for but told him she did and helped him, "Get right with Jesus".
He passed peacefully a couple of days later.
42. He Thought Of His Wife To The Very End
My great grandfather was in his mid-90s when he passed. His health had always been good, but a benign tumor that was deemed too dangerous to operate on at his age went septic. He was gone a week later. Before he passed, I went to visit him in the hospital.
My family used to see him a lot, but there was a falling out between him and my grandma several years before, so we stopped seeing them. Even so, I constantly ran into my great-grandpa at the store, and we always had nice chats. While in the hospital, he told me not to worry about him.
Most everyone he had ever known was gone, and he was ready to go as well. The week he felt himself getting sick, he knew something was off and made arrangements to get my great-grandma into a nursing home. He took care of her while she had Alzheimer's, and he wouldn't pass until he knew she was taken care of.
They had been married for over 70 years.
43. That Was It
Two days before my father passed from heart failure, my older brother and sister sat by his bed talking to him. He was conscious and able to speak. My siblings reminded him of how he was really good and kind to his parents. He cried, and he said, “I am happy that I was a good son. I love all my kids because they are kind and good to me”. Then he said every kid's individual name.
Later that day, his only surviving brother called him and wished he would come home. My dad said, “I am not coming home. This is it for me”.
44. Friends And Enemies
This man in hospice was a heavy drinker. This isn't usually a problem because when in hospice, you can get whatever you want as long as it is not against the law. However, when he drank, he became violent, so he was forbidden from having booze as a result. Between his requests for booze, he talked about how he and a friend got into a massive fight over some land and his equipment being borrowed.
As a result, they hadn’t spoken in 20 years. He said he didn’t even know why it was such a big deal and regretted being that aggressive. Basically said he missed his best friend and wished they didn't lose all those years.
45. Stop The Music
My grandfather lived into his 90s. According to my grandma, his last lucid words the day before he passed was when he called out, "Unpoop my pants"! It wasn’t very profound but very memorable because that song was popular at the time. Now I always imagine that line sung in Toni Braxton's voice.
46. Unfinished Business
I had this one older man where I used to work who would never talk unless his daughter was in the room. She asked something about her stepmother, who had passed a couple of years before I started working there. Her passing was the reason this man had to come to the nursing home.
One of the days after she left, I was getting him ready for bed—and that's when he dropped his bombshell confession. The last thing he said before passing was, "I should have finished the job of drowning her and burning down the house".
47. The Rule Of Three
I had an old lady who gave me some questionable advice. She was this 90-something Italian nonna, all dressed in black skirts and dripping with rosary beads and crucifixes. She was very Catholic—and yet her last words were so naughty.
She told me, "To be happy in life, you need three men. One for the money, one for the love, and one for the boom-boom-boom". It was certainly memorable.
48. She Had Enough
My grandma had a tough life. She was always harmed physically and emotionally by my grandfather. When she started showing signs of Alzheimer's, my grandpa turned up the dial—and started kneeing her and pinching her. As a result, we took her in during her last months.
A few days before her passing, my grandpa came visiting and pinched her cheeks and messed with her, expecting no resistance. However, she had a moment of clarity and snapped. She swatted away his hand and shouted, "Stop it. I'm sick of you and your ways. Go, leave, now. I don't ever want to see you again, not ever".
She was always a sweet and happy woman and watching her stand up for herself at last always makes me smile.
49. Six Degrees Of Separation
My great uncle actually confessed in front of his own children and grandchildren to having two illegitimate sons right before he kicked the bucket. The crazy thing was that none of his children knew this life of his. Not even my great aunt knew about it because she would have made a huge fuss if she was alive at that time if she did know.
What was crazier was that these two sons already passed five and seven years ahead of him, respectively. He was 98 years old, and his “invisible” sons were 65 and 69 years old. The children found out that one of his invisible sons actually was a teacher at a school that his granddaughters attended when they were in high school.
Nevertheless, his children decided to reach out to the children of his invisible sons. They got connected and learned even more stuff about my granduncle. The craziest thing was that I actually dated one of the granddaughters of one of the invisible sons. Talk about a few degrees of separation!
50. Homesick
In my first year as a nurse, I worked in palliative care. I had a patient who was 28 years old and losing her battle with cancer. She moved from Canada to be with her boyfriend, who left her a year after moving. We weren’t expecting her to deteriorate so fast.
I held her hand as she passed alone without her family or friends. Right before she passed, she made a tragic confession. She told me she wished she had never left for Canada and cried. Her family was overseas and couldn’t make it in time.
51. Straight From The Horse’s Mouth
I had a woman who was over 100 years old tell me she had been badly tormented by her first husband but was stuck in the marriage because of the culture at that time. He'd been thrown from a horse—that he'd also been very mean to—and kicked several times. She ignored his cries for help and let him perish.
She said she had never told anyone about it, but she felt guilty about it for over 80 years and could still hear him screaming for help.
52. Her Confusion Eventually Led To The Truth
A couple of days before my grandmother passed, she was really confused. She talked about my mother having a child a year or so after my own birth who was given up for adoption. She was talking about how sad and horrible this was and that I deserved to know.
After my grandmother passed, I confronted my mom about it, who denied it, and I truly believed her. A couple of months later, I found out the sad truth. It was my grandmother was the one who had put up a child for adoption. It was a baby girl who was born between my mother and aunt.
53. A 22-Caliber Mystery
I was taking care of a WWII Veteran with dementia. He would say the number "22" over and over, and the family never knew the significance of it. The number didn't line up with any significant events or dates that they were aware of.
The day before he passed, his mental state became incredibly clear, and he started telling the staff, "Twenty-two men. I offed 22 men over there". The poor guy had lived with that anguish for more than 50 years.
