Life After Life (Part 3 of 7) – Shared Death Experience

The shared death experience is a phenomenon that many have experienced. It is when someone who is close to you dies and you share a part of their transition experience. The shared death experience, like the near-death experience phenomenon, tends to be different for each individual experiencing the transition.

For example, my grandmother tells the story of when her mother passed, and right before she passed there was a type of glow that illumined her face during her passing. My grandmother, who has an affinity and connection to the angels, said that my great grandmother had an angelic look on her face just before she passed. This is one of many types of phenomena that can be experienced in the shared death experience.

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own. ~ Thomas Mann

Another story I remember is related to when my uncle passed away. There were many people surrounding him, and he had been in a coma for some time. Just before he passed he lifted his arms up to heaven and took his last breath. It was as if there were arms reaching down to him, to scoop him up when he was ready to pass.

As you can see, some shared death experiences can appear to have a deep spiritual quality that may include visions of angels, others who have passed on, seeing light or mist surrounding the individual transitioning, and many other ways that the eyes can be opened to the higher realms during someone’s transition. However, it does not need to contain a specific clairvoyant quality to be meaningful.  As was the example with my uncle.  No one saw anything supernatural, but there was still a dynamic quality to the experience when my uncle, who had not been conscious for some time, reached to heaven to be guided away in his transition.

I have personally had two shared death experiences. One was with a friend’s husband, and the other was when my father passed away. In the first case the personal experience was not necessarily for me, but for my friend whose husband had committed suicide. He had suffered with depression and many other issues by this time, and this was not the first time he had been suicidal. In fact, a few years prior to his suicide, he had made an attempt at suicide that injured him fairly severely. During that time I stayed at the family’s house to take care of him and his son, while my friend was at work.

I had been praying for this man for many years, and I believe that this is why the shared death phenomenon had occurred. The experience was completely visual, and I did not have a lot of other sensations during the experience.

In the vision I saw him in a heavenly place, what many would likely refer to as the “Pearly Gates”. Unlike so many of my other heavenly experiences, this one was actually quite typical in terms of what many would envision as a heavenly transition.  There was a gate, it was misty or cloudy, and there were several spiritual beings or angels surrounding the gate.

There are so many little dyings that it doesn’t matter which of them is death ~ Kenneth Patchen

As he was walking forward, the man realized that he did not want to go, but I saw two enormous angels with wings that were several stories tall spread their wings to block him from escaping. I do not believe that this was intended to torment him, but instead to relieve a sense of torment. As if heaven was saying, “It is time for you to stay, so your suffering can end.”

A day or two after the vision my friend called, and told me that her husband was missing. I of course prayed, but I didn’t know what I should pray considering the vision that I had. I was not fully sure what it had meant. I told her the vision, and she gained some level of peace related to the situation.

Later that day they found him on some property that they owned.  He had rigged his car so that the fumes from the ignition would come into the cabin of the vehicle. However, he was not found in the car, but rather several feet away from the car. It appeared that as the process was taking place he realized he did not want to go through with it, but it was too late. The carbon monoxide had already poisoned his system. This certainly explained the reason why I had envisioned the angels stopping him from escaping. This vision had literally manifested in the physical realm.

At the time I was part of a religious organization that believed in Hell, and there was some concern that individuals who committed suicide would go to Hell. However, because of the vision that I had days prior to finding the body, we were comforted with regards the state of his eternal home.

The experience that I had with my father was very different. He had cancer, and had been quite sick for several months. He was ready to go, but the one thing I can say about my dad is that he enjoyed every minute of those final months before he left. He was at peace with dying, since years prior he had a near-death experience himself.

I remember when he told me about his near-death experience. He said, “Jimmy (my family’s nickname for me), I just want you to know that there is nothing to worry about in the afterlife. We are all going to be okay.” At this time I had recalled many of the details of my own near-death experience, and this was something that I had solidified in my mind prior to this conversation, even though my family grew up in a rigid religious system.

We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love. ~ Madame de Stael

The night that my father died he was very weak. I remember him saying, “It is soon,” before we all went to bed. That night for the one of the very few times in my parents’ married life my mother slept on the couch, because my father had sprawled himself over the whole bed and my mother did not want to wake him.

At about 3:00 AM I woke up hearing my father laughing hysterically. This was not unusual for him to do if he were healthy, but I thought to myself, “What is he doing?  He could barely breath properly yesterday.” I opened my eyes to a misty and bright vision. I saw my father sitting at the head of a very long table – I could not see the end of it! The table was crowded with people, and I knew intuitively that these were individuals who had already transitioned prior to my father’s passing, and had at one time been a part of his life. It did not surprise me that the table extended further beyond my vision, because my father was the most social person I have ever known.

I saw the figure of Jesus standing behind my dad, and I heard my dad say, “Rusty, you son of a gun,” or something of that nature. When I saw this vision and heard what was taking place, I realized that I was envisioning my father’s transition. When I thought this, I was immediately back in my body and said aloud, “Dad’s dead.”

I grabbed my fiancé and explained the experience. When we went downstairs my father was no longer in his physical body, but his body was still warm, and his arms were limp. I could not hear him breathing, and was unsure about waking my mother, because it would have been horrible to have a “false alarm”. I decided that considering the vision, and that I could not wake him, to get my mother up.

We had time to say our goodbyes before he was taken away. According to the hospice nurse, considering the state of the body when I had found it, I had likely had the vision within minutes of his transition. She was tearing up as I was recalling the story to her.

The experiences that I give here are not meant to be sensational, but rather to indicate how intrinsic our connection is to those around us, and also to offer a greater perspective and hope about what happens when we die. In the next blog in this series I will be discussing the language of the afterlife, and also the varying experience that individuals may have when they transition.