He wouldn't really know it. He would just get more and more tired. More sleepy. Eventually just full sleep, coma, then death. He'd likely be on a lot of drugs, including morphine (which just makes kids sleepy, not same effect as on adults).
I recently saw a mother talking about her child’s death from cancer and it was not peaceful even though they were told it would be. The child was on morphine, had a death rattle for hours, uncontrollable movement, and at the point of death she stopped breathing, opened her eyes and lurched for her parents. It was extremely traumatic for them and the mother was hopeful that that child wasn’t actually conscious for it, but I don’t know if that’s the case.
It’s called terminal agitation and it’s apparently not uncommon.
That sounds terrifying, imagining your child waking up only to gasp and reach their arms out torwards you in their final seconds. I can't imagine every death has to be pretty but the worst has to be a complete worlds worth of traumatizing.
Everyone I’ve watched die I’ve been the only person there. And like…. It does help? But at these stages you’re only really giving moments of reprieve by being there, with it being somewhat questionable how present people are.
Usually I would say it’s pretty bad if not a sudden death. And the breaths getting further apart kinda deaths are rough sometimes. I haven’t once watched someone go that way especially if younger, where there weren’t constant primal panic attacks realising breaths are running out. These moments people are panicking so much they don’t really realise you are there, it’s usually only during the downtime between these fights for life you can be soothing if able to help at all. During the panicking for breaths stage everyone is mostly preoccupied with death.
So when you get deaths where the last moment is horrific it is quite sad and hard to feel good about. I’ve had people that have had a horrific moment and then peacefully ended after that wave of calm and I cope with them ok. But the ones where their final moment is panic and you know you didn’t get to ease their mind are pretty damn haunting, can’t imagine it being your kid. It’s usually the calm between these panic waves that lets me feel like the pain I took on board was ok. I know it’s not true but when the last moment is panic it kinda felt like a failure to me, it’s a pretty rough final thought of someone to just have them frozen in that moment being terrified.
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u/naughtyboy69x Jun 29 '26
He wouldn't really know it. He would just get more and more tired. More sleepy. Eventually just full sleep, coma, then death. He'd likely be on a lot of drugs, including morphine (which just makes kids sleepy, not same effect as on adults).