Death Becomes Her: Writing About Death
by Out of the Darkness
One of the hardest things to write about for a lot of writers is death scenes. This is understandable, because it’s an uncomfortable topic in life and not one that most people deal with up close and personal. However, if you write fiction, your characters are going to encounter it. The death of a loved one, be it on the battlefield or at home, is a great motivation for your character to act. The act of caring for a dying family member or friend is hard and pushes characters to examine who they are. So for those of you who aren’t often on the front lines, this post is to help you know what your character will experience a bit better.
The first thing to understand is that death on the battlefield or of a quick illness (like an aneurism bursting) is sudden, and the movement around the character may prevent an immediate response. This can lead to delayed grieving, survivor’s guilt, second guessing their response, and the feeling that the person who died is merely missing for a bit and will return soon. In real life, bereavement counseling is extremely helpful. On the other hand, lingering or overwhelming grief may be just the type of torture- I mean character development- that you need to push things along.
For long term illnesses, it’s a totally different experience. When death is near, there are a number of sights, sounds, smells, and experiences that your character will be aware of on some level. If your character is some kind of supernatural critter with extra sharp senses, they are probably more aware of them than normal. So the rest of this post will be devoted to breaking things down along that line.
What is it like to take care of someone with a terminal illness?
More often than not, it’s exhausting. People lose control of bowel and bladder, and they have to be changed or else they get bedsores and/or infections. They have to be bathed and dressed. Often times people have a harder time swallowing food and you have to find soft food to feed them or put meals into a blender to make them soft enough to swallow easily. They need meds, and you’re probably going to have to crush up medications and put them in pudding or apple sauce. They have pain and anxiety at odd hours and you have to get up to take care of them. They have changes happening in their body and maybe their mind, and you are desperately seeking out information and wondering when they’re going to die. You’re tired, so tired, and grieving while trying not to let your grief get in the way of doing what has to be done. You’re hoping that they’re going to die soon, if only so they stop suffering, and then you’re feeling guilty for hoping that they die.
There are often family issues to deal with, and people in the family who refuse to accept that death is coming and want to “do everything to save them” and that just adds to the exhaustion. Maybe you have hospice care to help with some of this. Maybe you don’t. Being the primary caregiver for a terminally ill person is like being on the front lines of a battle, constantly, for an undetermined period of time that could be years or days depending on what is causing the death and the will of the dying person to live.
What does it look like when people are about to die?
This section covers what you might see. In the days before most deaths, the person’s skin changes. They become pale, even when very dark skinned, and the skin takes on a waxy tone. They’re probably running a fever and not sweating much because they’re too dehydrated to sweat. As blood flow starts to move away from the arms and legs, fingers and toes start to turn darker in dark-skinned people and a purplish-blue in pale people. This discoloration looks like bruising and can come and go almost at random in the days before death but quickly becomes very permanent as death approaches. It can move up the arms and legs, but happens sooner in the legs for most people. It’s not uncommon for it to move up to the knees and into the thighs. If the person is dying of liver failure, their skin will have a yellowish tint that will first be noticed in the eyes. After death, gravity takes over pretty quickly and blood pools on whichever side of the body is facing the ground. The rest of the skin looks translucent in light-skinned people and ashen in dark-skinned people.
Breathing also changes. At first, people breathe more rapidly. They look short of breath. This can be helped with oxygen, if the person will tolerate it. A lot of people won’t. They’ll pull at the tubing and try to get it off. This is usually caused by anxiety, which can be helped with medication. In the hours before death, people start breathing fully through their mouths. Their chest heaves and their abdomen seems to be doing most of the work. This is called accessory muscle breathing, and it happens because the diaphragm muscles are failing. This will continue until breathing stops.
The person will urinate less and less until they stop urinating at all. They will have more trouble having bowel movements due to lack of strength to push the stool out. Often at the time of death, as the muscles relax the person will release stool and/or urine. They should be cleaned up in accordance with whatever your religious standards are. Many religions have special requirements for this, and you should look into this if your character is a different religion than you are.
What Will I Hear?
A lot of people have heard of the death rattle, but don’t have a realistic idea of what it actually sounds like. It’s a wet, raspy sound. If you have one of the fountains for your cats and have ever let it get really low on water, that’s pretty close. Another way to describe it is a moist crackling or popping sound. It can be heard without a stethoscope and pretty much anywhere in earshot of the person. You can hear it on every exhalation. It sounds like it’s coming from the lungs and throat at the same time, and that’s because it is. There is medication that can help (Atropine most commonly), but it’s as much for the family’s peace of mind as for the dying person. Secretions can also be suctioned out of the mouth and that helps a bit too.
The open mouth breathing sounds very raspy and loud even without the death rattle. There’s a definite wheeze there. The person is struggling to get enough air in because as they are dying, the body is moving blood flow to the core organs and away from the arms and legs, which leaves all that sacrificed tissue telling the brain that it’s not getting oxygen. It sounds like a fight to get air in, and it kind of is.
If your character is a medical type, they will use a stethoscope to listen to the bowel sounds, which are noted during the death process by being slow at first and then absent as the body shunts blood away from the bowels and they stop moving at all. Absent bowel sounds are most common within 24-48 hours of death.
If the person is on an oxygen concentrator or other equipment, there will also be the sounds of the machines running in the background. They’re fairly loud depending on the model and their maintenance level, but they quickly become background noise.
What Will I Smell?
By and large, there isn’t a lot of smell involved until the very end unless the person has wounds. Infected wounds or especially tumors that have grown outside the skin are one of the worst smells on the face of the planet. The smell of exposed tumors is rancid and acrid, and extremely strong. You can smell it anywhere in the room. Infected wounds are best described as a rotting meat smell that sometimes has notes of bitterness or sweetness to it depending on what kind of infection we’re talking about. There will also be the smell of urine and/or fecal matter if the person isn’t kept very clean.
The smell of impending death is something else altogether. It is the result of the liver and kidneys shutting down, and it’s most noticeable within 24-48 hours of death, especially when one is changing the briefs of the dying person. It’s a smell like an old cider press, sweet in the same way that rotting apples are and just as cloying. This is because the smell is actually ketones and ammonia in the urine, but the smell is unmistakable once you know it. Animals and humans alike respond to it on an instinctive level. Even if you’ve never smelled it before, you are repelled by it. Families will ask caregivers to wash the person over and over again, but nothing gets rid of it. For anyone who has ever cared for the dying, when someone says, “It smells like death,” that cloying smell is what comes into your head.
Vital Signs
During the process of active death, several changes in vital signs are pretty good indicators that the time is coming. Blood pressure measured on an extremity (usually the arm) gets lower and lower until you can’t read it at all. Oxygen saturation (measured with a pulse oximeter on the finger) gets lower and lower until the hands are too cold to get a reading at all. The heart rate goes wildly high and then starts to drop off until the heart is hardly beating at all before it stops forever. Most people will breathe very rapidly at first (I’ve seen as high as 42 breaths/minute), and this will eventually slow down with longer and longer pauses (periods of apnea) between breaths. In the last moments, it’s very easy to think that they’ve stopped breathing altogether only to have them take another breath 45 seconds or a minute later. This is a huge source of anxiety for families, because they wonder whether the person is actually dead or not.
Other Notes
Keep in mind that this is NOT a comprehensive list, only a general outline for the purpose of helping you write with a more authentic touch. It is NOT a substitute for medical advice. It is also a generalized overview, because the process of death is incredibly unique. Some people just die all at once and some people drag on for weeks. A lot of it depends on individual temperament and the person’s level of acceptance of their own death. I will also note that this doesn’t always happen in a straight line. Some people seem to get better for a day or two and then decline rapidly. Some people do that several times. This causes a lot of confusion because family members will think that their loved one is getting better and will breathe a huge sigh of relief just in time for the person to plunge back into the decline.
Terminal lucidity is also remarkably common. This is a phenomenon in which a person who was unresponsive due to coma, advanced dementia, or massive personality shift becomes responsive again for a brief period of time before death. Sometimes for a few moments, occasionally as long as a couple of days. This is a great time for family members to say goodbye or enjoy some last sweet memories before the loss of a loved one. It’s common enough that those who deal with the dying start circling the wagons as soon as it’s noticed because they know that the time is coming and soon. If they’re on hospice, they get bereavement ready and the number of visits will go up or they might bring in round the clock nursing care. If they’re in a hospital and the person doesn’t have a DNR on file, they get the crash cart ready. It’s a remarkably telling sign, but it’s also a gift to the dying person and their families that medical types try to respect by encouraging them to spend the time together.
In Conclusion
Death is a universal experience and nearly every good book has at least one. Hopefully this post has given you a better idea of what it looks like so that you can write your death scenes with more accuracy and better detail. If you need a reference for dealing with grief in your characters, I wrote a post on According to Hoyt in January that you may find helpful: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2018/01/31/the-right-way-to-grieve-and-support-the-grieving-by-out-of-the-darkness/
Now go forth and write!
Mad Genius Club 
Exhausting . . . for days, weeks. Falling if you took your eyes off of them, falling trying to get out of bed and go to the bathroom, usually just after you’d fallen asleep. It’s worse than a newborn and 2AM feedings, and gets worse rather than better.
My parents were in an excellent skilled nursing and hospice facility for their last months. My Dad died suddenly in his sleep, my mother very slowly, hitting most of the points above over a seven day period.
Killing characters quickly, in a big battle, is much easier. Even the gory details, if you insist on having them.
My mom looked after her mom for 15 years, as she lost movement, speech, ability to recognize…
That was my great grandmother, until i was one of the few people she actually recognized.
In some cases, there is a sharp, bitter, almost metallic scent just after the moment of death, especially if the person is in a confined space like an ambulance or aircraft. Again, you know what it is on instinct alone.
Never experienced death up close and personal. That is the final moments. I have watched two people die close at hand, and another at third hand. Very good description of what I saw and at times noted. Thanks.
“Some people seem to get better for a day or two and then decline rapidly. Some people do that several times. This causes a lot of confusion because family members will think that their loved one is getting better and will breathe a huge sigh of relief just in time for the person to plunge back into the decline.”
That’s what happened with my father-in-law back in November. He appeared to rally about 24 hours before the end. Much of the family had gone home. The next morning, we were getting calls to come down and say good bye. Before the day was over, he was gone.
The effect this has on family can be brutal, even more so than normal. My wife and her mom are still fighting guilty feelings because they think they should’ve pushed for the doctors to do more during that time.
Definitely something to keep in mind.
I’ve seen death – and dead bodies – a number of times in my life (the first time when I was three; I found the corpse of a man who’d slipped off the edge of the walkway along Manila Bay, and hit his head on the rocks, and drowned because he ended up facedown.) The descriptions you gave are very good, and I hope there will be follow-up (if any) on after the death itself.
In writing, I’ve seen some people avoid describing the person dying too much by describing the people around him or her instead. Not all those people will be concerned with the dying person directly but the people around said person, and my experiences have run the gamut from the sympathetic to the incredibly selfish.
When my father was dying, the most I remember was how skeletal he looked – a shell of himself. His mind was still as sharp as ever, and years later, I sometimes wonder if he’d died of the unrelenting boredom of being in the ICU – the way that some people fall quickly into decline after they retire from work and don’t have anything really to do. He’d crack jokes to relieve his boredom, and the doctors thought he was going through ICU psychosis. (I really wanted to shake them. No human skills, those.) My aunt was somewhat appalled that they wouldn’t let me take (then newborn) Vincent to see him from the doorway of his room – there had been indications, she’d heard, that seeing younger children could sometimes get the person in the ICU to rally and get better.
Most of my memories of the time before he died was mostly of exhaustion and work – I was the one cooking and making sure the house was regularly supplied with all the things people needed when they came back from the hospital vigils – because I’d just given birth, I couldn’t do those hospital vigils, so I was expected to take care of everything else.
Until he had to go home to Australia, Rhys was a great help to me – and subject of some of my more amusing memories. He would often use the hospital visits to get Vincent to sleep since the hospital was air conditioned and Vincent inherited a great deal of his father’s British genes, thus was unable to deal with the heat early on. So father and son would sit in the big front hall of the hospital … and young women would come flirt with the handsome young Caucasian with the adorable baby. Poor Rhys. Those women were militantly ignoring his chilly politeness, his saying “My wife is visiting her father in the ICU” (it’d only prompt the nurses to offer to take him up there.) I once came out of the elevator to see he was surrounded by a cluster of young nurses, who dispersed once I approached – and because he’d get up and go to me, and kiss me.
Those incidents were an illustration in how predatory some women could be – any indication that the wife/significant other is preoccupied, emotionally or otherwise, and it was an opening! for them to try steal a man away. Rhys and I wondered afterwards if those women ever realized that if they did manage to steal a man away or break a relationship through their shenanigans, what guarantee did they have that the man’s affections would be wholeheartedly theirs?
The thing I most remember about my father’s death was the last failed breaths—they sounded a little like two small taps on a drum, the result of not enough strength to inflate the lungs anymore. My brother checked his pulse and I checked the time (and then calibrated it from an accurate computer clock, though his official time of death was when the coroner’s van got there.)
I was in the room for both my father-in-law’s death and my father’s death, and I have never touched a dead body.
Incidentally, we all have a very vivid image of how you find out about sudden death in America, and it’s wrong. We all think you get a call or a visit from a nice policeman, but in reality it’s a bunch of things not adding up, concerned calls from people wondering where X is, looking up car accidents, and eventually having a friend come pick you up from work. (My husband came home one day with a harrowing saga of what happened to his coworker.) Oh, and referencing a different case—sudden death, with no given cause, is almost always suicide. (In one case that I know of, the person was suffering from something with the alternate name of “the suicide’s disease.” Basically, it feels like your face is on fire. Continuously. With no medical intervention. Though lately, it seems that CBD oil actually mutes it, so there may be a viable treatment, but without treatment, it’s the sort of thing that keeps you from sleeping, in continuous pain.)