Transcribing the Mystery

Following the Sacred Path of Final Words

There is so much so in sorrow.

— My father's final words

Imagine you have reached the end of your life. Your beloveds stand at your bedside. You look into their eyes and prepare to speak. It is a moment to heal wounds, express love unsaid, and share your view from the threshold. It is a sacred time, when all of life is concentrated into those final breath-filled syllables.

What do you see?

What do you feel?

What are your final words?

Very little has been written about final words other than what is found in anthologies and websites that quote the clever exit lines of the famous. They include accounts of conversations like that of comedian Bob Hope with his wife, who, alarmed by her husband's rapid decline, told him: "Bob, we never made arrangements for your burial. Where do you want to be buried, honey? We have to figure this out. Where do you want to be buried?"

His response, typical of his dry wit: "Surprise me!"

As is often the case with last words, Hope's were true to character.

The awe-filled exclamation of Apple's Steve Jobs — "Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow!" — is an example of the intensified language we hear at the threshold and is true to the personality of the inspired innovator. Another well-known pioneer, Thomas Edison, emerged from a coma as he was dying, opened his eyes, looked upward, and said, "It is very beautiful over there." As you will see, his words were representative of those of others who have stared out from the threshold. Many other final words have been chronicled, from Karl Marx's "Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!" to Emily Dickinson's "I must go in, for the fog is rising."

Chaz Ebert, wife of celebrity critic Roger Ebert, shared a detailed account of her husband's last words, in Esquire in 2013:

That week before Roger passed away, I would see him and he would talk about having visited this other place. I thought he was hallucinating. I thought they were giving him too much medication. But the day before he passed away, he wrote me a note: "This is all an elaborate hoax." I asked him, "What's a hoax?" And he was talking about this world, this place. He said it was all an illusion. I thought he was just confused. But he was not confused. He wasn't visiting heaven, not the way we think of heaven. He described it as a vastness that you can't even imagine. It was a place where the past, present, and future were happening all at once.

These remarkable words were read with fascination by people throughout the country — and have the authentic complexity of the words I have heard at the bedsides of those I have researched. However, the authenticity of less contemporaneous reports of the last words of famous figures is at times questionable. Ray Robinson, who compiled Famous Last Words, Fond Farewells,Deathbed Diatribes, and Exclamations upon Expiration, notes in the introduction to his book: "I've come to appreciate the difficulty of authenticating so-called exit lines, since witnesses are often too distraught or confused to remember things accurately, or simply choose to edit or improve the remarks for the sake of posterity."

However, for the rest of us who are not celebrities, our last words go unedited and unrecorded in time. And yet all of us are given a platform before dying. Every day, compelling last words are spoken — and they are rarely as simple or clever as what we might find between the covers of books and magazines. Many final words are less literal, less intelligible, and more enigmatic — and their complexity makes them even more remarkable.

Sanctified Language at the End of Life

Our final words deeply reflect who we are and what most matters to us. It is as if the lens of our Creator is magnified and all that we are is in close view. As I discuss in later chapters, even those who have been in a coma and those who have not communicated in years may speak just before they die, to advise, forgive, love, or even to leave friends and family with mysterious phrases, such as "It's not that," "The pronoun is all wrong," "I left the money in the third drawer down," or a simple "Thank you. I love you."

Buddhists believe that reflecting upon what might be our last words can deepen our acceptance of life's impermanence and remind us to savor the present moment. In Buddhist and Hindu belief systems it has been a tradition for the dying to offer parting words of wisdom. Some Buddhist monks have even composed poems in their final moments. Those who are dying are often perceived as having access to truths and revelations not available to those who are living. In anthologies of days gone by, deathbed conversions were documented, and final words acted as testaments to an almighty God and the existence of angels. End-of-life confessionsoffered people a chance to repent sins and beg forgiveness. Final words are still considered a golden seal upon our lives, like a stamp that sums up all our deeds and days and lets those around us know what we believe in and what really matters.

Those who are on their deathbeds seem to have a kind of privileged connection to God, or Source, or all of creation. Some might ask, "Why do we assume final words to be somehow closer to God's truth?" And that is a good question. A large amount of literature answers this in spiritual terms: when we approach death, we are returning to Source, and our thoughts and words are therefore elevated because of this shift in dimension. The findings of the Final Words Project suggest that this may, indeed, be true.

Among those I interviewed for the book is the Reverend Cari Rush Willis, a chaplain who works on death row and in a hospice. She shared her perspective about the enigmatic words we hear from the dying: "People at the end of their lives have one foot in heaven and one foot on earth." She shared an example of a care-home director who asked for her help because one of the Alzheimer's patients kept requesting assistance in finding his passport. Willis explained to the director that the patient did not have a physical problem that needed to be solved but a spiritual one that needed to be heard. She repeated to me her conversation with the...