When my Dad was ill (1995) the hospice nurse gave me a booklet about what to expect as his time here got shorter. The Saturday night before he passed away was very busy. He called my name about every 15 minutes as (the book told me) he was between here and heaven. I think she's looking for someone to tell her it's OK to go.
I told my Dad that my mother was waiting for him and she had a beautiful dinner for him when he was ready. That was about 8 pm he quietly passed about 11 pm.
Hugs to you and your wife during this stressful time.

My mother saw people all the time. After many tests, doctors recommended a psychiatrist to diagnose her. She had senile dementia, which is similar to Alzheimer's. Mother had little girls, black men, men with no legs and tons of women who visited her screened porch daily. It was scary and sad. She was living alone and called the police regularly to report the people next door who she thought were very suspicious bad people. The police called my sister and asked her to get mother to stop it. She finally lived with DH and me for a short time before she insisted on going back to Indiana.

Not saying that's what your MIL has, but I'd keep notes for the next doctor visit. Please watch her money. Mother would hide her purse and we'd have a devil of a time finding it! I think she thought those people took it.

Shortly before my mother died (a week?) she asked me who the little girl was - standing there in the corner. I know she saw someone there but of course it was just her and me in the room.

The night my DH grandfather passed away we had gather all the family and as we were standing there visiting he looked at the ceiling, raised his arms up, started to cry and said "Oh Mama" and passed away. I think with all my heart his mom had come to take him "home"!

I don't know about the jewelry box, but my grandma has very real hallucinations with certain medications. Unfortunately you don't know which ones will cause them until it happens. She would seem wide awake but would talk to people that weren't there. It was so weird.

When I was a new kid working on the ambulance we spent a lot of time in nursing homes. I was always fascinated by the folks with dementia. I remember having a long conversation with a lady that was convinced I was her little sister. She was sixteen and I was fourteen and our daddy was going to be home soon. She was basically nervous in her current surroundings so she just reverted to a "happy time" in her memories. I was mesmerized by that.

Even though I can honestly say that I do believe in "visitors" I also believe there is a logical explanation for everything.

I was 19 when my grandmother died unexpectedly in the night, in a hospital hours from my home. That night, she "visited" me and said good-bye. She sat at the foot of my bed and said "I have to go now, but you're going to be OK," that was it. The next morning at 6am my mother woke me to give me the news. She gently shook me awake and said to look at her, she had something to tell me. I told her "I know, Grandma's gone, she was here last night to say good-bye.

Mom asked no questions, said nothing else about it. Later I asked didn't she think that was strange. She said not at all, it actually made sense to her, seemed like something her mother would do and say.

So as far as I'm concerned, those were the last words my grandmother spoke to me. It's been almost 19 years and it is still one of the most significant, moving, moments in my life. I remember those words when I'm having a hard time.

My EX DH's grandmother started seeing people a month or so before she died. She would tell us that she saw John (her DH who had been dead many years) and she told us she saw Elder (her son who had died a few years before) standing outside her window. I truly believe she saw these people.

When my Dad was in the hospital he told his doctor that the head of the Texas Dept of Public Safety had come to see him and that he had got dressed and gone with him to the café for coffee. The doctor gave the nurses a good chewing out until he found out my dad was hallucinating. He had never left his hospital room.

The mind is a funny thing.

We don't know why people see things or hear things or feel things, but my Dad (who was blind) talked alot about his childhood. He was the happiest there. He and my Mom did not have the best of marriage, all communication.
Also I had a very good friend here and had been baby sitting my GD, and when she passed away, my DD went down stairs in her own house, the rocking chair was moving and she could "see" a older lady with white hair and she told my DD she was in no pain now. Scared the H** out of my DD and she made her husband go downstairs. I feel that it is God's way to comfort the people.

My mother lived with me for 3 years before she passed away.She came into my room one afternoon,about a year before she died and asked me who those "girls" were in her room.Of course there were no girls in her room but she insisted they were sitting in her chair.She said they were dressed in black and wore really red lipstick. Nobody I knew!LOL She saw them from time to time after that.She had Dementia and did and said a lot of strange things the last year before she died.My dad died here in my home after being in a nursing home for 6 months.He also had Dementia.For several weeks before his death he saw and talked to his brothers and his mom and dad a lot.I told him one day that it was OK if he wanted to go be with them and within 3 days he was gone.

My husband's brother's MIL has dementia, for a while before she entered an Assisted Living place, she lived alone. She constantly saw "people" come into her house and steal things. I don't know if her visions stopped when she entered Assisted Living. My dear friend at work said, when his elderly mother was dying, she swore her late husband Paul came to see her. The day she died, she told everyone "Paul is conming today." I'm not sure what I belive, but this is really spooky.

My Mom had Alzheimers and one morning after she woke I asked her if she had a good sleep. She told me no because her granddaughter Meagen was sleeping next to her and kept kicking her in the night and then she peed the bed. LOL I gently told her Meagen wasn't there and she pointed to the bed and told me that Meagen was still there under the covers sound asleep.

Mom would often tell me of who she saw but I think she was just recalling memories of the past.

Anne

I was also going to mention my neighbour down the street who is 82 is having vision problems and seeing things that aren't there. Hallucinations that move and people and all kinds of things but she realizes that what she is seeing isn't real and we aren't seeing the same thing. Turns out the medication she was on was causing the vision abnormalities. My friend took her Mom to the ER quite a few times thinking her Mom was having a stroke and she was sent home. Kathy mentioned this to her Mom's Dialysis
Doctor and he told her the medication her Mom was on can cause these type of hallucinations. He reduced the dosage and for the most part they have disappeared.

Anne

My niece is an RN and told me that there were two elderly men that were sharing a hospital room. One of the old men pressed the call button and asked her to come and get those large birds out of their room. She went in his room and assured him there were no birds. She said in just a minute he did the same thing again so she went back and this time checked on the other old man. He had passed away. She is still certain it was angels instead of birds.

Maybe we should listen more to the "visions" and "imagination" of the very old and the very young.

My grandfather also had medication that caused hallucinations. He's 84 and has early alzheimers. So it was a few months before it occured to anyone that the new med was causing them, everyone was concerned that he was getting worse. But his were so random, no connection to people he knew. One day he was furious about a dog in the house, he had seen it and was looking for where it went, spotting it then losing it, looking again. There was never a dog. They've changed the meds now.

My mom had dementia for the last few years of her life and saw many things! It started in the hospital once when she saw a circus going down the halls. She said the a big brown bear, from the circus, came in to check her eyes. This was so real to her, we thought it was medication. After that she saw cats in her living room that she would feed. She had babies all over the place and was forever telling us to be careful not to sit on them when we were there. She would talk to them and play with them,very bizarre to us. The doctors said it was perfectly normal for dementia. We got used to it and went along with it so she wouldn't feel bad or get upset that we didn't believe her. she also thought she was living back here in our home town...she had been living 2 hours away for over 20 years. It's such a strange thing to watch it take over the person you knew so well...hard to watch too, until we got comfortable with it.

This just happened at my sisters house when the pope was visiting the USA this year.

Sister has one of those 300 day clocks that plays music,except it hasn't had the batteries changed or played any music in over 10 years.My sister said one day her and her DD were in the computor room,and had the tv on and every channel there was the pope.So they were discussing the whys of why every channel should be showing nothing but the pope.Complaining in other words,then all of a sudden that clock started playing Ave Maria.She said they both looked at each other and couldn't believe what they were hearing.

Her DD says mom did you put new batteries in that clock?? No she says i havn't touched that clock in years!! So they took it down,checked it out and it was as dead as a doornail,they could not get it to play Ave Maria or anything else.

So they decided they better quit complaining about the Popes coverage.
Weird huh???
Kathi

A lot of my dying patients see and talk to people who aren't there. Sometimes they're on morphine, which can cause hallucinations but not always. A couple of the nurses I worked with on night shift told me about a man who would scream for them to get his legs/feet out of the fire. He was dying. Scary.

One day, one of my patients died in a private room (we have some private, a few semi private (for two) and some four bed wards. Well, after this man died his call light went off for hours afterwards. Talk about creepy. At first I thought someone was fooling around in there but they weren't, it was a room near the nurses' station so I could see if anyone went in there. I even went in there a couple times looking to see if someone had pulled the call bell out of the wall. It wasn't.

When DD was small (from about 3 to 5) she had some medical issues (still does), she would talk about the ladies that sat by her bed at night and kept her company.

Once she said they told her not to be afraid if she died it would be ok. Sometimes they'd tell her stories, then when she was about 5 one day she said they told her she wouldn't be able to see them anymore, but she'd be fine, and they'd be close by to watch over her. She wasn't on any drugs at the time.