Terminal lucidity

Playing a Chinese crossword puzzle game on my phone, I come across a saying 回光返照 huí guāng fǎn zhào / “return light reverse shine”, from an 1120 A.D. compilation of the sayings of a Zen master.  This refers to clarity of the mind or brief excitement in someone on the point of death, called terminal lucidity* (coined in 2009).

This immediately called to mind something about my last landlord, Terry, though not to do with his mental lucidity, rather his appetite.  

He’d been diagnosed in Nov (2008) with lung cancer and had gone off his food.  Although I’d moved out (in 2006), I still went to see them every week, mostly Friday after work.  Friday being Fish Friday, I’d go along with a portion of fish and chips and try to tempt him into eating some.  Each time he’d refuse.  In January (2009), he suddenly tucked into my fish and chips, eating most of it.  I was rather pleased that his appetite had come back.  He died a week later.  (No, not from food poisoning from my fish and chips, in case you wonder, but from a heart attack.  Being a hypochondriac [his wife’s description], he’d probably frightened himself to death about his lung cancer.  Kinder this way, in my opinion, not having to suffer a long illness.)

Told an old English friend Simon about this.  He had a story to tell about his mother:

Quote

[She] didn’t eat or drink much at all in the 3–4 weeks before she died of Alzheimer’s. The nurses and I struggled to get anything more than a sip of water down her. The night she died was the hottest yet recorded here in the UK. That evening as I was leaving I tried one more time to get some water down her. She had not responded other than vaguely to anything other than touch for a good few days. She suddenly gulped all the baby bottle of water down I was holding up to her. She never woke again after that. I mistakenly told my brothers and the nurses I thought she had turned a corner.

Unquote

Another friend, Daisy from Hong Kong, said her parents had asked to be helped up into a sitting position after lying in the hospital bed for a fortnight or so.  Went into a coma the day after, then passed away.

*Terminal lucidity, also known as paradoxical lucidity, rallying or the rally, is an unexpected return of mental clarity and memory, or suddenly regained consciousness that occurs in the time shortly before death in patients with severe psychiatric or neurological disorders. This condition has been reported by physicians since the 19th century. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_lucidity)

 

Google says:  Quote Some people experience a brief surge in energy in the hours or days before death. This may last from a few minutes to several hours. During this time, your loved one may talk more, be interested in engaging in conversation, or interested in eating or drinking. Unquote My landlord Terry fits the last case.