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Death and its Mystery, At the Moment of Death; Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dying – Camille Flammarion

Letter 932 from Georgina Bernstein Mexico July 31st 1900

 My mother died on November 18th 1889, eight months ago.  She had fallen ill with pneumonia, on the first of the month.  We were living in Mexico.  My sister, who is the wife of the president of the International Bank, in New York and who is living in that city, could not come, she herself being unwell.

As her father-in-law was president of the Union Cables Company, I had been allowed to send as many messages a day as I thought necessary to keep my poor dear sister informed as to our mother’s illness.

I sent two cables a day from November 1st to the 17th. That day I sent ne which read ‘Mother very low, but doctor has not lost hope’.  There was no reason to think her worse.

On the 18th, at ten o’clock, my dear mother breathed her last and my grief was so poignant that I did not think of letting my sister know.  I did not do so until the next day.

She then wrote me, asking me to state the exact day and hour of the death; she told me that not having got any news on the eighteenth, she had believed mother better.  She told me, however, that she had suddenly been seized with a nervous trembling and had begun to weep, and when the servants had asked her what was the matter, she had answered ‘My mother is dead; I hear my sister’s cries’.

Raising her eyes to the clock, she had seen that it was ten o’clock.  At that hour I was on my knees, weeping, my head upon a chair, listening to my mother’s last breaths and realising that all was over. 

I uttered a cry so terrible that they thought I had gone mad.