What Happens in the Last Moments Before Death?

Introduction

Abu Salama (RA) died in his house in Madinah with his eyes fixed open, and when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came in he reached out and closed them. Then he explained the thing everyone in that room had just watched and not understood. The sight follows the soul when it is taken. The man had been looking at something. His eyes stayed pointed at it after he was gone.

That is the honest shape of the answer. In the last moments before death the soul is drawn upward through the body until it reaches the collarbones, the dying person becomes certain that this is the parting, and the veil over the next world thins far enough that he sees what is coming for him while the people around him still see only a bed. Two things are decided inside that window and nothing outside it: whether he wants to meet Allah, and what the last sentence out of his mouth turns out to be.

The soul reaches the collarbones

The Quran does not describe death from outside. It puts you inside the body. No! When it has reached the collar bones, and it is said, who will cure him? And he is certain that it is the separation, and the leg is wound about the leg. To your Lord, that Day, will be the procession (75:26 to 30).

Read the second line again, because it is the most human line in the passage. Who will cure him. The room is still calling for a doctor. The person in the bed has already been told, by something that needs no words, that no doctor is coming. Those are two different pieces of knowledge in one room, and only one of them is correct.

The same moment appears again from the other side. Then why, when it reaches the throat, and you are at that time looking on, and We are nearer to him than you, but you do not see (56:83 to 85). You are the closest person in the world to him. You are holding his hand. And you are not the closest thing in the room.

What he is looking at

The Prophet ﷺ said that whoever loves to meet Allah, Allah loves to meet him, and whoever hates to meet Allah, Allah hates to meet him. 'A'isha (RA) heard that and said what any of us would say, that all of them disliked death. He ﷺ told her that was not what he meant. When death comes to the believer he is given good news of Allah's pleasure and His honour, and at that point nothing is more beloved to him than what is in front of him (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Riqaq).

So the fear you feel now is not the answer to the question. The answer is produced later, in the last minutes, when the thing being offered becomes visible and a person either reaches for it or turns his face away from it.

The Quran names who does the offering. Indeed, those who have said, our Lord is Allah, and then remained on a right course, the angels will descend upon them, saying, do not fear and do not grieve but receive good tidings of Paradise, which you were promised (41:30). And again, plainer. The ones whom the angels take in death, being good and pure, the angels will say, peace be upon you. Enter Paradise for what you used to do (16:32).

Who else is in the room

One long narration, carried through al-Bara ibn 'Azib (RA), fills in the scene. It describes angels coming down with faces like the sun, carrying a shroud and fragrance from Paradise, and seating themselves at the distance the eye can reach. Then the angel of death comes and sits at the head. He says, O good soul, come out to forgiveness from Allah and to His pleasure. And the soul comes out the way a drop of water runs from the mouth of a waterskin. Al-Suyuti gathered that narration with its transmitters in al-Durr al-Manthur, and names al-Hakim among the scholars who accepted it.

Sit with the image of the waterskin for a second. It is not a wrench. It is the least violent motion a liquid can make.

The one sentence that is never granted

There is also a request recorded in the Quran that arrives at exactly this moment, and it is the only prayer in the book that is answered with a flat no. Until, when death comes to one of them, he says, my Lord, send me back, that I might do righteousness in that which I left behind. No! It is only a word he is saying; and behind them is a barrier until the Day they are resurrected (23:99 to 100).

Not send me back so I can see my children. Send me back so I can do something. The value of an ordinary Tuesday becomes obvious about four seconds too late, and the Quran refuses to soften that. And the intoxication of death will bring the truth; that is what you were trying to avoid (50:19). Whatever a person spent his life not looking at is delivered to him, in full, by death itself.

What the people standing there were told to do

Almost nothing, which is the surprising part. The Prophet ﷺ said to prompt your dying with la ilaha illa Allah. Abu Nu'aym records that instruction from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri (RA) in Hilyat al-Awliya and states it is established and agreed upon. Prompt, not badger. You say it near him so that it is the sentence in the air, and you leave him to say it.

The reason for the care is in the same hadith about Abu Salama (RA). After the Prophet ﷺ closed his eyes, some of the family cried out, and he ﷺ told them not to pray against themselves, because the angels are saying amin to whatever is said in that room. Then he ﷺ made du'a for the man by name, that he be forgiven and raised in rank.

And there is a line the classical books carry, quoted in Siyar A'lam al-Nubala and in Ibn 'Atiyya's tafsir, that whoever's last words are la ilaha illa Allah enters Paradise. That is why the whole practice exists. Not to control the ending. To put the right sentence within reach of a man who has very little reach left.

He ﷺ went through it too

Ibn Abi al-Dunya, in his book on the dying, preserves 'A'isha's (RA) account of the Prophet's ﷺ own last moments. There was a vessel of water in front of him. He ﷺ was putting his hand into it and wiping his face, and saying, la ilaha illa Allah, death has its agonies. In another wording on the following page he ﷺ said, O Allah, help me against the agonies of death.

Then he ﷺ raised his hand and said, the Highest Companion, the Highest Companion, until he was taken. Sahih al-Bukhari records the same words, three times, with his gaze fixed upward.

The best of creation did not skip the hard part. He named it out loud, asked for help through it, and then chose his answer to the offer while the offer was in front of him.

The last thing said in that room

Ibn Abi al-Dunya also keeps a small story with no famous names in it. Thabit al-Bunani told of a reckless young man whose mother kept warning him, saying, my son, you have a day coming, so remember your day. When the matter of Allah came down on him she leaned over him and said it again, that she had warned him of this very bed.

He answered her. Mother, I have a Lord much given to kindness, and I hope He will not deny me some of His kindness today, that He forgive me.

Thabit's comment on him is one sentence long. May Allah have mercy on him for thinking well of his Lord in a state like that.

That is what those last minutes actually are. Not a test with new questions on it. The opinion of Allah that a person has been quietly building for forty or eighty years, finally read out loud, in a room where the angels are listening and saying amin.