I can only speak of personal experience, as when my grandmother died,
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I was in my twenties, and she passed in a Catholic hopsitsl, where years before, my first son was borne, and years later it became to place where they studied dreams.
At any rate, I was just a few years married, and I remember visiting her daily, and the day she died a respiratory therapist came in, to help ease her breathing.
My grandmother, made a comment, almost unnoticeable, that she thought she was going to die that day. The therapist answered reassuringly,saying “Not today”, while administering the oxygen. Then,
We talked further, as much as her faint energy would suffice, and told her of the imminent birth of my second son, who was due to come any time.
She listened attentively, and very quietly and slowly said, “That will be me”.
I was shocked by this admission, while at the same time fascinated.
Soon after at home, in bed with my wife, almost asleep, we felt the bed rock very noticeably. We both knew neither one of us moved, and it felt like an earthquake. Soon after the phone rang, and the voice said my wife was supposed to go to work that night. She worked through an employment registry, and called my wife by my grandmother’s first name, of which she could not have possibly have known.
I had a bad feeling, and so did my wife, and we got dressed and hurried over to the hospital.
There, my grandmother died practically in our arms.
Soon afterwards, my second son was born, I think it must have been a week later.
He was my best son, endearing, sweet and good hearted. He took his life at the age of 33, caused by very entangled and almost impossible causes, as impossible, as it is to write it down.
It wasn’t until my youngest daughter’s little son was born, that I discovered the very unusual resemblance with my departed son.
My daughter decided to use my son’s first name as his middle. For some reason, both my wife and I have a special feeling for this grandson.
I decided to elaborate and veer away from the thesis of the forum, so as to give more credence to the feeling that people are more aware of how their connection to life and death has some sort of predictive element to it.
To this day, there is of course, a lot of uncertainty, as to what all of this mean, but there exists in the undercurrent of our life, that in fact, there is more to existence, then we can possibly totally get to realize.