Death is the only experience every human being will have and that no living human can describe. But the dying can. In their final hours, they speak — to people who aren't there, about places no one else can see. Nurse practitioner Diana Osei has been present for more than 400 deaths over 23 years. She started writing things down in 2008. What she found in her notes in 2023 stopped her entirely.

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Death is the only experience every human being will have and that no living human can describe. But the dying can. In their final hours, they speak — to people who aren't there, about places no one else can see. Nurse practitioner Diana Osei has been present for more than 400 deaths over 23 years. She started writing things down in 2008. What she found in her notes in 2023 stopped her entirely.

2026/07/29 Report

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A Hospice Nurse Kept a Record of What Her Patients Saw in Their Final Hours — One Detail Appeared in 97% of Cases

Diana Osei, 57, has worked in palliative and hospice care in Ghana and the United Kingdom for twenty-three years. She is experienced, methodical, and deeply attentive to her patients — the particular attentiveness that develops in people who have learned that presence, not intervention, is often the most meaningful thing a nurse can offer at the end of a life.

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She began keeping a record of what her patients said and experienced in their final hours in 2008, following a death that moved her in a way she found herself wanting to document. Not for publication initially. For herself, the way a person writes down a dream before it fades.

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