Absence

In the final hours, Cagney witnessed her mother’s sudden and dramatic return to herself as she was before her dementia. The phenomena ‘terrminal lucidity’ was first defined as “the re-emergence of normal or unusually enhanced mental abilities in dull, unconscious, or mentally ill patients shortly before death, including considerable elevation of mood and spiritual affectation, or the ability to speak in a previously unusual spiritualized and elated manner,” by researcher Michael Nahm.