Krishnamurti, a spiritual leader in India who died in 1986, was once asked what was the most appropriate way to say goodbye to a man who was about to die. He answered: “Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.”
~Jiddu Krishnamurti died on February 17, 1986, at the age of 90, from pancreatic cancer. His remains were cremated and scattered in India, England and the USA.
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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Yesterday, on July 25, 2008, 47-year-old Randy Pausch died with pancreatic cancer…he’d only learned he had it in September 2006…and by the time of his passing he had inspired millions of people with his attitude. Remember…he was the US computer science professor who gave the “last lecture” (about achieving your childhood dreams) at Carnegie Mellon University last September. (Perhaps like me, you saw it on YouTube after it was posted in December.)
Randy Pausch passed away at his home in Virginia. His wife, Jai, and his 3 children, Dylan, 6, Logan, 4, and Chloe, 2, survive him.
Randy’s notoriety all began with the question: What would you say if you knew you were going to die and had a chance to sum up everything that was most important to you? Yes, by the time he gave that last lecture, Randy had been told he had MAYBE six months to live, so his answer was very powerful indeed! (I showed the lecture to my then 12–year-old and 10-year-old…and even they were inspired!)
We heard Randy say, “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just the way we play the hand.”
And, “I don’t know how not to have fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day I have left.”
More than anything, even after his death, Randy Pausch said he wants people to live their potential and do great things…and help other people pursue their dreams as well!
And he wants every one of us to live generously, spend more time with loved ones, and be patient with others. As Randy said, “Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you.”
And he wants us to see the brick walls that come before us as opportunities and challenges, not obstacles. “Brick walls are there for a reason,” he said. “They let us prove how badly we want things.”
Knowing he was dying, Randy was sad for his children that he would not be around for them as they grew up. So he spent hours and hours videotaping himself with his kids (and took lots of photos)…swimming with dolphins…at Disney World…so that in the future they would be able to see how they had touched each other’s souls and laughed together! “Kids, more than anything else, need to know their parents love them,” he said. “Their parents don’t have to be alive for that to happen.”
Randy built separate lists of his memories of each child. He also wrote down his advice for them, things like: “If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, ‘Tell the truth.’ If I got three more words, I’d add, ‘All the time.’”
The advice he’s leaving for his daughter, Chloe, includes: “When men are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do.”
And having cancer, Randy had been given the time to have vital conversations with his wife, Jai, that wouldn’t be possible if his fate had been a heart attack or car accident.
Through it all he always thought every day was a gift.
Now take the gift he’s given you….go out and love your day…jump into life…embrace it…live as if you’re dying and die as if you’re living!
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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Now that I am gone,
remember me with smiles and laughter.
And if you need to cry,
cry with your brother or sister
who walks in grief beside you.
And when you need me,
put your arms around anyone
and give to them what you need to give to me.
There are so many who need so much.
I want to leave you something —
something much better than words or sounds.
Look for me in the people I’ve known
or helped in some special way.
Let me live in your heart
as well as in your mind.
You can love me most
by letting your love reach out to our loved ones,
by embracing them and living in their love.
Love does not die, people do.
So, when all that’s left of me is love,
give me away as best you can.
~ Author unknown
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James
A GP from New Zealand went to the aid of a golfer who suffered a sudden and overwhelming heart attack. As he was going to help, he saw what he described as a white form, which seemed to rise and separate from the golfer’s body.
…
Or how about the case of Diane Smyth, from Harlow in Essex, who recalls the time she sat with her elderly father as he died. As she awoke in the darkened room, she noticed something strange hovering above her father’s body. As her eyes focused on the mysterious shape, she couldn’t help but notice a flame licking the top of the wall against the ceiling.
Diane says, “I saw a plume of smoke rising, like the vapor from a snuffed-out candle. It was being thrown off by a single blade of phosphorous light and was indescribably beautiful. It seemed to express perfect love and peace.
“I eventually switched on the room light. The mysterious light vanished and the room was the same as always on a November morning, cold and cheerless, with no sound of breathing from Dad’s bed. His body was still warm.”
Have you experienced an unusual deathbed encounter?
I’d love to hear about it…
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
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There remain many deathbed encounters that defy easy answers.
…
Linda Jacobs’s experience is typical. Her father was terminally ill at a Manchester hospital, but as the family gathered around his bedside for what they believed was his last night, he became increasingly alert.
“’He kept saying, ‘Move out of that smoke’,” says Linda. “He then began smiling and laughing as though he was meeting with people we could not see.
“He then turned and looked at my mother and said, ‘Your Mum is here! What on earth is she doing here?’”
But the figure wasn’t really there, for one very good reason. She had died earlier in the week, but the family had decided to keep the news secret for fear of causing further upset.
Moments later, Linda’s father also passed away…with a smile on his face.
…
The story of Kate Batchelor, a sheep farmer in the Western Isles of Scotland, is equally puzzling. Her brother died in hospital, and a friend was dispatched to tell her the news.
When they reached the farmhouse, Kate greeted them, saying, “I know why you’ve come. I heard him calling me. He was saying, ‘Kate, Kate’ as he passed over.”
She even knew the exact time her brother had died.
…
One lady said that all of the clocks in her house stopped working at the time of her husband’s death. They started again a week later.
…
And there are cases where people have witnessed the precise moment of an individual’s death, and have seen mysterious shapes emerge from the body, or circle nearby. I’ll share those stories in another Blog…
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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No matter whom you believe was involved in the disappearance of Madeleine Mccann, your prayers must go out to that little girl! Here is some of what her parents have to say:
“Our daughter Madeleine was abducted on 3rd May 2007 in Praia da Luz, Portugal, 9 days before her 4th birthday. She was taken from our holiday apartment where she was sleeping with her younger brother and sister whilst we were dining 50 yards away. Despite a massive investigation led by the Portuguese police and supported by the British police, we still do not know who has taken her, why she was taken or where she is….”
Although the Portuguese Attorney General recently lifted the Mccann’s as Arguido (suspects) in the abduction of their now five-year-old child, Madeleine, Kate and Gerry Mccann feel it is no cause for celebration and “look forward to scrutinizing the police files to see what has ACTUALLY been done and, more importantly, what can still be done, as we leave no stone unturned in the search for Madeleine. We would once again urge anyone with relevant information to come forward and call our helpline on +44 845 838 4699 or send information to investigation@findmadeleine.com
“Please keep Madeleine in your thoughts and prayers. And please – remain vigilant. We will NEVER give up looking for Madeleine.”
And their press statement continues with:
“It is hard to describe how utterly despairing it was to be named ‘arguidos’ and subsequently portrayed in the media as suspects in our own daughter’s abduction- and worse. It has been equally devastating to witness the detrimental effect this status has had on the search for Madeleine.”
All I can say is, “I hope you find something helpful in the files that will bring big sister Madeleine back to Sean and Amelie.”
Thousands of children go missing every year from all around the world but there remains no standard method for collecting, recording and categorizing data in a ‘borderless’ Europe. Because of what happened to Madeleine, Kate and Gerry Mccann are working on getting a EU wide Amber alert system implemented—a system of European wide effort between police departments and the media to blanket local airwaves immediately with information and photographs when a child is abducted. They want to help highlight other cases of missing children.
As Kate says, “As a parent of an abducted child, I can tell you that it is the most painful and agonizing experience you could ever imagine. My thoughts of the fear, confusion and loss of love and security that my precious daughter has had to endure are unbearable—crippling. And yet I am not the victim, Madeleine is. No child should EVER have to experience something so terrible.”
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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The doctor was halfway through his night shift when one of his patients began to behave in a most peculiar way…he could see him slowly regaining consciousness and becoming increasingly alert…as if he had regained his energy. Yes, Rolf was staring intently at the foot of his bed…and then he started talking to an invisible presence. Transfixed, the doctor watched from the shadow of the doorway. After a while a beautiful smile crossed Rolf’s face and he seemed to relax completely.
The next day Rolf told his family that during the night his sister had visited him…and that they’d had a long chat. The strange thing was, his sister had died the week before but nobody had told Rolf this because they thought the shock might kill him. It was in that moment that the doctor realized Rolf was going to die no matter what the medical intervention…it had been his experience that when a dead loved one visited a patient, well, his moment had come. The nurses commonly accepted it because they saw it quite a lot.
Indeed, shortly afterwards, Rolf died.
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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So many times I’ve heard the phrases, “Never give up” and “Justice needs to be served.”
The FBI, now having more than 30,000 employees (affectionately referred to as “G-men”), recently celebrated its 100th anniversary as a national security agency. And looking look back over the years at some of the cold cases in their files, I noticed plenty of Unsolved Mysteries, like:
There is 79-year-old James Whitey Bulger, a Boston organized crime figure added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 1999 and who faces charges for racketeering, murder, extortion, narcotics and money laundering…the “rat” or informant (said to be the inspiration for the Jack Nicholson role in the film “The Departed”), charged with 18 counts of murder and corrupting two FBI field agents.
“Whitey Bulger is a case that we take very personally here in the FBI for a lot of reasons. 99.999 percent of the FBI agents that are on board today, or have been on boat yesterday, have been 100 percent clean,” Burrus said. “Mr. Bulger found a couple of our weak spots.”
Bulger was tipped off about a secret federal indictment and remains a fugitive.
Jimmy Hoffa, an American labor leader and criminal convict, who served nearly a decade in prison. On July 30, 1975, Hoffa disappeared from a parking lot in Detroit and was never seen again. According to a convicted Mob hit man, Hoffa was shot in the house of Giacalone and his body was then buried in the foundations of the Giants stadium. Another mobster claimed that Hoffa was shot and put in the trunk of a car that was then put through a car compactor. But nobody knows the truth.
How about the three convicts, John Anglin, his brother Clarence, and Frank Morris, that escaped on June 11, 1962, from Alcatraz (“The Rock”) located on that lonely island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Paddle-like pieces of wood and bits of rubber inner tube were found in the water along with a homemade life-vest washed up on Cronkhite Beach. Had the men made it across the Bay, reached Angel Island, and then crossed Raccoon Straight into Marin County as planned? Or…? The FBI officially closed the case on December 31, 1979. I wonder what happened to those three men?
Dan Cooper, the hijacker (35 yrs ago) who did the incredible…jumped out of the back of a plane with a parachute and $200,000 ransom money (in twenty dollar bills) and disappeared into the night. By the five-year anniversary of the hijacking, the FBI had considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration. But Cooper’s fate remains a mystery to this day. Maybe he didn’t survive…in a wooded area in 1980 a young boy found a rotting package full of $20 bills ($5,800 in all) that matched the ransom money serial numbers. Thanks to a Seattle case agent named Larry Carr and new technologies like DNA testing, the FBI has reignited this case.
So, can I use those phrases about never giving up and justice being served with Cindy’s case? So many people have written to me saying Cindy’s file should be reopened and the potentially existing exhibits be reexamined with today’s sophisticated DNA technology. Let’s find out once and for all if she licked those envelopes that encased the threatening letters…if she sucked on those cigarette butts that were found at the scene of a few assaults…
What do YOU think? Do YOU wanna know? Tell me!
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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Terminally ill patients sometimes speak, or claim to have spoken, to people who have already died. Or they see, or have seen, places not presently accessible or visible to you. Yes, they may hear the voice of a deceased relative…sense their presence or appear to see an apparition…feel their touch and sometimes even smell their fragrance.
Is this a drug reaction? Is it a hallucination? A delusion? Does it stem from a desire to believe in an afterlife at a stressful time? Is it the product of a faulty memory?
Or is it the beginning of a detachment from this life…and a preparation for the transition…so it will not be frightening.
No matter what you believe the cause to be, do not contradict, explain away, belittle or argue about what the person claims to have seen or heard or smelled. Just because you cannot see or hear it or smell it does not mean it is not real to your loved one. Affirm their experience, for they are normal and common. And if they frighten your loved one, explain that they are normal occurrences.
It seems deathbed phenomena come in three forms:
1) The dying can receive visits from dead loved ones or they may have visions of lights and other worlds.
2) They may experience strange coincidences such as receiving a visit from a relative they did not know had died.
3) Their loved ones and family may experience inexplicable events such as clocks stopping or strange lights appearing around the patient. Others have seen a translucent shape leave the body at the time of death, or felt tingling sensations as if the person’s spirit had passed right through them.
Yes, even I have been a witness to this phenomena—when I was sitting with a dying man late at night, he seemed to become energized and sat up in bed and was intently talking with an aunt (who had passed away years before) sitting in a chair in the corner of his room…except I couldn’t see her. He said the light she brought was beautiful. He passed away the next day.
In another Blog I’ll share a story of a deathbed encounter a doctor experienced.
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James
“I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them – you don’t even have to talk. You don’t have to do anything but really be there with them.”
~ Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James