"You're Next": People Are Sharing The Last Words They Heard Someone Say As They Were Dying, And They're Not All Inspiring (2024)

Recently, we shared a post where Quora users shared their experiences being present for the final moments of someone's life...and hearing their last words.

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Well, as it turns out, BuzzFeed's readers wanted to share their experiences hearing someone's last words too, so we rounded them up here:

1. "A young woman was being run by gurney to the operating room, but the staff didn't think she would make it in time and charged into a room in the intensive care unit. The young woman had carried a full-term but not alive fetus for a couple of days and came to the hospital septic and bleeding out. During all the chaos, she was conscious. Within minutes, an emergency hysterectomy was attempted, during which she coded. I was positioned by her head, and she spoke, 'I'm going,' before her head fell to the side, and she was gone. I'm not sure anyone else heard. Was she announcing her passing to tell us we could stop? It was a gentle utterance within a nightmare."

—anonymous

2. "My girlfriend, gasping for her last breath, looked at me and said, 'You're next!' That spooked the crap out of me, and I made a quick exit!"

—anonymous

3. "I was a respiratory therapist, and a man said, 'Look at all the beautiful flowers!' He then passed away."

4. "My son passed away at 35. He had an addiction to alcohol. In April 2022, he was admitted to a hospital in San Francisco and had to be revived by the staff in the ICU. Magically, he survived that incident. On the day he was released from the hospital, I walked with him, and he told me the ICU nurse advised him, 'Don't come back here again! People never survive a second time in ICU with the illness you have.' He told me it scared him, and he would do what it took to be sober. That same year, he called me on Thanksgiving day and said, 'I wish I were with you in Hawaii so we could walk together again.' That night, he was rushed to the hospital. We were never able to talk again as the brain damage caused by his heart-stopping for 15 minutes was too much. I still long for a walk with my boy."

—smartlegend40

5. "As a hospice nurse, I had the privilege of hearing many last words, but the most beautiful one came when I entered a patient's bedroom and almost sat down in her bedside chair. She stated: 'Oh please don't sit there — my angel is sitting there!'"

—anonymous

6. "I'm a former pediatric emergency registered nurse and have a heartbreaking one. I'm crying even now remembering it. A 5-year-old girl was about to die, and she said to her mother, 'Oh, look, Mama! Grandma is coming to take me to that park! She said she loves you and we'll see you later. Love you, Mama! Bye bye.' She fell asleep. And she was gone 15 minutes later."

7. "I once cared for an elderly gentleman with dementia who was slowly declining. He didn't speak much, and when he did, he didn't make sense. One of my co-residents had developed this very nasty rash around his eye, and when we went to see this patient together, he sat upright. Looking horrified, he pointed a finger at my co-resident's face and said, 'What happened to your eye?!' That night, he was transferred to the ICU and passed away. That was the last thing he ever said."

—fluffyalligator20

8. "I heard a dying mom say to her 45-year-old son: 'I know you so little but love you so much.'"

—anonymous

9. "A friend of mine, a Buddhist, was dying of cancer. It is said that when you die you will be greeted by a thousand Buddhas. After being comatose for several hours without opening her eyes she began saying 'Hello' and 'I’m feeling wonderful, thank you' and 'I’m pleased to meet you' and similar phases for about 10 minutes. She then passed away with a smile on her face."

10. "My father-in-law was known for his lectures on life. It drove me up the wall when he'd come over unannounced. It was then you'd know you were in for a 'lecture' and couldn't just hide or, better yet, lie and tell him we were leaving. So, anyway, in his last 10 years, he was experiencing a lot of health issues, and they didn't diagnose him with mesothelioma until six months before he died. When he went to hospice, I was the only one who would sit with him."

"I was studying for my Medical Assistant license, and at first, he would talk with me in between his morphine-induced deliriums, then it was nothing except opening his eyes and smiling and drifting off again. The last night, he 'woke' up and said, 'Hi Brenda, how are you doing?' He sounded so happy! Then he went back to dreaming in his morphine land. About midnight, I got up to go and bent down to kiss his forehead. He grabbed my hand and said, 'I've got to go.' And he went."

—anonymous

11. "Our youngest son had many health issues from severe hemophilia and HIV, as well as primary pulmonary hypertension (which is what did him in at age 32). As he lay on the floor in my arms at our local drug store, felled by his bad heart, he struggled to sit up as if he recognized someone or something and said, 'Y'all gotta be kidding me!' We were not Southerners, nor did we live in the South. I'd never heard such a deep and incredulous Southern accent from him before. And those were his final words. I felt the life leave his body then, and I told the EMTs to stop with the CPR. He was gone."

—anonymous

12. "I'm an ER doctor. One afternoon, a young man in his late 30s came in with chest pain. He was having an ST elevation MI (heart attack), which was surprising given his young age. I called the cardiologist, and as we were getting him ready to take him to the cath lab to open up his coronary arteries, the patient told me that he didn't want to go until he saw his wife. She was still about 45 minutes away from the hospital. He looked absolutely terrified. I told him that time was muscle and that the sooner we could open his arteries, the better he would be. I looked him straight in the eye and said, 'You're going to be fine. We do this all of the time.' I promised that I would meet his wife as soon as she arrived and bring her to the cath lab. He died on the table. His artery dissected (tore) during the procedure. It haunts me to this day."

13. "My husband died of ALS in his 50s. In the ER, he opened his eyes, and his last words to me were, 'You're the best.'"

—anonymous

14. "My dad had serious heart issues but felt well enough one Sunday morning to go on a trip to Florida. He woke up and told my mom this was the best he had felt in years. A few minutes later, he told my mum his stomach was really hurting. Mum told him she would make him some tea. When she returned to the bedroom, he was down on his knees talking to some unseen person. He looked at my mum, said, 'I'm going now,' and then passed away. Mum always believed some heavenly person had come to get him."

—anonymous

15. "Years ago, my uncle was in the process of dying. He took in his last breath, then woke up and said to his mother, 'Oh, Mom! You have to get ready — it's so beautiful over there.' He died peacefully, having given the family a glimpse of heaven."

16. "My husband had a tragic accident with multiple broken bones and punctured lungs. Before he lost consciousness, he said, 'I'm so sorry. I love you.' He died two days later, having never regained consciousness."

—anonymous

17. "I was on my morning walk with my late husband when he grabbed his heart and said, 'I'm fine, keep walking.' I sat him down on a bench in a gazebo and saw his last breath — he died in my arms. That was 24 years ago (he was 54). He made dying look so peaceful."

—anonymous

18. "Working as a paramedic, a lady in the ambulance looked up at me and said, 'That’s it, goodbye.' She went into cardiac arrest and died."

19. "My 89-year-old mother told my father, 'Bill, let’s make a break for it.'"

—anonymous

20. "A young man in his 20s received a cut at work that would not heal. He went to the doctor to find out he had leukemia. Treatment failed, and he went into hospice care. When he asked us to call his family to his side, we knew the time was close. After loving goodbyes to his loved ones, he stated, 'Time for me to go. The Angels are here.' He died shortly after these last words — a beautiful exit from this world."

—anonymous

21. "My brother-in-law was dying. It was sudden. My husband, his brother, and I stayed during the night shift. His breathing took a bad turn, and the nurses said we should call in family. My husband left to do that, leaving me in the room with him. He shot up suddenly, reaching out toward something, and said one small word: 'Oh!' It was said with incredible reverence, and it was like he was shocked and overwhelmed, but in a good way. It was a pure moment of total vulnerability and innocent beauty. And then he laid there and just died. I was in awe of it, and I still am."

22. "A friend's brother-in-law was dying of cancer when, near the end, he got very excited and said, 'He's here! He's here! He's all around us.' The man then put his head down on the pillow, went to sleep, and never woke up."

—anonymous

23. "My Dad collapsed suddenly in our hallway. After he fell down, I yelled, 'Should I call an ambulance?' and he clearly replied with 'No!' despite already no longer breathing. We did, of course, call emergency services immediately after realizing it was serious and started reanimation. The emergency doctors took over and tried everything for almost an hour before one very kindly asked whether they should carry on and transport him or stop."

"I knew that my Dad didn't want life-prolonging measures, but the situation was so sudden that I panicked and wasn't immediately sure how to respond...until I realized that my Dad, who had been severely ill for a long time, probably understood what was happening when he didn't want to call an ambulance — so we stopped CPR. Thank you so much for that, Dad. Your last word made it an easy decision."

—anonymous

24. "My friend hadn't spoken for days when, out of the blue, she said to someone unseen, 'Where the hell are we going?!' Those were her last words. She was 106."

25. "I was working as a nurse in a nursing home, doing the morning med pass. We had a husband and wife on our unit that the family had requested be in different rooms because although she had Alzheimer's (and was otherwise in great health), she would wear herself out taking care of him and fussing over him as she had done for all of their marriage (he had significant medical needs). I was in front of his room with the med cart when she pushed past it. I reminded her she wasn't supposed to go into his room until he was out of bed. She said, 'I just need to say goodbye. I'm going to see my mother, and I probably won't be back.' I chuckled to myself, thinking (since she was 85), If you're going to see your mother, you definitely won't be back. (Of course, I assumed it was a declaration she had made because of Alzheimer's dementia)."

"Not two minutes after she kissed him goodbye, the alarm went off, signaling a door hadbeen openedby someone who hadn't used the code. The staff went running to catch her while I continued passing out meds. The next thing I see, thestaff is dragging her body back into the unit to get the crash cart. She hadliterallywalked out the door and dropped dead. Or, as she put it, she went to see her mother and didn't come back."

—anonymous

26. "My father served his country for 24 years in the United States Air Force and always gave great life advice. For example, he told me that once you become a parent, the job is for life until the day you die. Anyway, my father was on his deathbed at the age of 86. Two days before he passed, my younger brother and I started to fuss about Dad's condition in the ICU. I saw my father move his head and say to my brother and me without missing a beat: 'Cut it out!' I had to laugh, but in my laughter, I started to cry because right then and there, I remembered that he told me in my 20s that the job of a parent lasts a lifetime until death does us part. Dad winked at me and said, 'I'm ready to go home, son.'"

—anonymous

Did you hear someone's last words that really made an impression on you? Let us know in the comments below or via this anonymous form.