Deathbed vision experiences, has anyone experienced this with there loved one?

This happens often in my family. I believe someone comes for us when it's our time. It's always been a family member, but not always who you think it would be. I find it comforting to know someone comes to take the dying family member's hand to help ease them on their way.
I've read and listened to interviews of explanations regarding how the brain works during this time. The visions and mind playing tricks.
I prefer to believe in my version.
It's hard to say how long they last. My mother has said my great-grandfather saw his daughter, who had passed several years before, for a few months before he passed. My grandmother saw a nephew who had passed the same year, but it was just a few days before she passed.
Believe what feels right to you.

I just wanted to add, I don't believe it is only the elderly who has someone come to them. A good friend's 4 year-old had major surgery. He wasn't able to speak due to a breathing tube, however, he kept pointing to a corner of the room. There wasn't anything in the corner, not even a chair.
He passed away a few days later. As awful as it was to loose him, my friend found some comfort in what he was seeing in that corner.

Since mom passed away only days ago, I believe I answered my own questions. Someone was preparing her. A couple days before she took a turn for the worse and became unresponsive, she was chatting away. I listened and then I preceded to go to her and ask whom she was speaking with. She looked at me and said "Ruby" I got chills. "Ruby" was a childhood friend and neighbor of my mothers. Mom was very close to her until she died from intestinal cancer many years ago. I remember when Ruby passed how devastated mom was. So if this does happen that someone comes for us, I am comforted knowing it was Ruby. I know all this can be argued but its hard to question things that you see and hear for yourself. We don't know what goes on when one is half in this world and the next? Since mom passed I have been told some unique stories of loved ones speaking with others we can't see. It is rather interesting.

Yes I have seen many instances of this(worked in nursing homes for years) you are not imagining things. And part of what hospices teaches family are the transition your loved one might go through where they seem to have one foot in this plane of existence and one foot in the next.

My grandfather's last hospital stay was the last week of his life. I was his caregiver, so I was at the hospital every single day as soon as they would allow. A day or so after he was admitted, I went in like I had before and sat down on a chair, only to have my grandfather tell me to get up and find somewhere else to sit because I was too big to sit on my grandmother's lap. I looked around for a woman who had been dead for over nine years by then, but I didn't see her. He was absolutely insistent that she was sitting in the chair.

I came to realize that just because I didn't have the eyes to see it, it didn't mean that God hadn't sent an angel who indeed looked like my grandmother to my grandfather. I'm absolutely convinced of it. It would make sense that our Heavenly Father wouldn't want us to be afraid to come home to Him. I think that God allowed Granddaddy to see her because of that very reason, so that he would know that everything was going to be fine. And I'm so grateful that the angel looked like Grandmama, because Granddaddy loved her so much and had missed her every moment they were apart. It made it easier in a way. I knew that he would be taken care of.

His funeral was twenty-eight years ago yesterday and still, I remember it all like it just happened. I don't think I could ever forget it.

My dad had a lot of visions when he was dying. He had a lot of confusion too, and stuff we worked out as his eyes just not working correctly (things looking closer then they actually were, mundane stuff like that).

I'll never forget one thing that happened to me though, not long before he died. It was a rare moment when he was fairly with it and animated. I took advantage of the situation and offered to get him a coffee from the rather awesome cafe in the nursing home we were in. I got myself a mocha, got dad a latte, and I came back to the room.

When I walked in dad was looking off to the far corner of the room. He turned from that corner, and looked at me. I smiled, lifted the cup and said, "I have your coffee, dad."

And he looked back to the other corner, and then at me once more, and said:

"Did you get one for mum?"

My mum died in 2008.

Just sharing actually. I found this thread through my own questing, I'm sure folks will still trip over it years from now. ;) I wanted to add my experience to the pile.

My mom has similar episodes (84, in nursing home). A very good book on this subject is "Final Gifts" written by two hospice nurses. I read it when my father died and now am reading it again. Also, I have been interested in the work of Peter Fenwick, You can Google search his name and find other information if interested.
My mom also sees and hears the children. She is currently in hospice, by the way for peripheral vascular disease. For the past year she has been visited by a choir, and the choir director, Will, wants to marry her.
No one in the family remembers anyone in her life named Will or a choir director. He could be a guardian angel, I suppose. But she says he is very rich and will take care of her. The story she tells is very elaborate and full of detail.
She's not on morphine or any drugs that could cause these delusions. She does not have a UTI; though she has one from time to time. BUT As I said, she has been speaking about Will for a year. The vascular wounds in her legs are very very bad and infected. Circulation is so poor that I doubt they'll really ever heal. And now she is on the second Z-pack for congestion. Even with all of this, she is able to speak pretty clearly, though at times it's more mush-mouthed. And she recognizes all of us who visit. I agree with the above comments that we all need help in the transitions of life to death.

The question of an "afterlife" can be discussed forever. There will always be folks on both sides. Some say that these "visions" are just the synaptic process of a dying brain. I say, if that were true, our experiences would be more similar. But each event I have heard about does not support that at all...scientifically, that is.

Believeing in an afterlife or a higher power is more a function of faith...you either have it or you don't. Since it cannot be proven definitively, that either exist, then the only "proof" we will have will come after our own death. Personally, I think that the evidence is too compelling to dismiss. I am a very analytical so, in my universe, science and faith co-exist. I think it is compelling that one of the greatest scientific minds in history, Albert Einstein, was a beliver in an afterlife. I am not so arrogant as to think that I know everything in this world and beyond. So, until someone proves to me, otherwise, I say that these episodes are a way of preparing us for the next life.

I also find it comforting knowing that someone whom we know and love will come back to "collect" us. I think the hereafter is so vast and beyond our human imagination, that this "transition" makes it easier for us to understand and accept.

And that, my friends, is my last "2 cents" for what is left of 2011....see you next year in 2012.

jennie this thread is several years old so don't know if you have question or are just reminiscing.
Seeing spiritual beings is very common at the end of life. Hallucinations are totally different. Some people believe in them and some don't. Hospice nurses are people too so have the same reactions as others. Spiritual visitors are not usually frightening and often people the patient knows who have already passed. hallucinations are often disturbing but seem very real. they can be an inanimate object like a knife or some kind of wild life like a mouse running up the fridge(the nurse hit the fridge with her chart board then mimed throwing the mouse out side the door) The patient was satisfied the mouse had been disposed off. another patient was telling her nurse about all the people she was seeing. In this case they were total strangers but she could describe their clothes. In the middle she stopped and said "Ther's one now she is wearing a red hat" She waved and said "Hello" She was completely rational and just found it amusing. Another man was seen sitting up in bed and looked as though he was eating,smiling and talking. When asked what he was doing he said "Oh Joe just came by and we are having a slice of watermelon