Note to self: die in a way that keeps my brain intact for a few seconds after death.
> “As a neurosurgeon, I deal with loss at times. It is indescribably difficult to deliver the news of death to distraught family members,” he said.
If you always saw yourself as a victim, if you wallowed in the trauma and abuse that life gave you, then your final moments are likely spent remembering all that trauma and how shitty and unfair your life was, and convincing yourself you’re better off dead and gone far away from this world. A crude way to die.
If anything, any sensation or thought requires energy. Experiencing 1000x or 100000x more sensations in the same space of time takes 1000x/100000x amount of energy, and it's not like your dying organism has hidden last reservoir of energy to power your brain activity.
Did I comfort you?
The poster wrote that he got assaulted by a football player, fell on the ground, and somehow hurt his head.
Then he met a girl, they got married after two years and then had a child. Another two years later they had another child. He also had a great job, and bought a house, where he lived with his wife and family for like 10 years.
One day he was sitting on the couch, looked at a lamp, and noticed that the lamp did not look right. The perspective was off. He stared at the lamp for three days. Then he realized that is not a real lamp. Nothing was real.
Then he woke up, still laying on the ground where he had hurt his head 15 minutes ago.
There is still energy at the moment of death (e.g., your ATP doesn't instantaneously disappear), meaning for a few brief instances, there is still energy to perceive and during these instances, the subjective experience of time may differ from normal day-to-day experience. It's not to say perception actually goes on forever, but the subjective experience of time feels like it does (or, at least changes our normal perception of time).
my guess is you slowly transition to simple machine with sense inputs and outputs until it all shuts down.
Death could be like that too. A flood of signals you're unfamiliar with and a lack of signals you're used to having.
It probably depends on how much warning you have and your willingness / readiness to pass as well.
Kind of like if you're really tired and can't wait to fall asleep vs. scared and trying to keep yourself awake.
There are other possibilities besides memory recall. It sounds a little bit like falling asleep, where there might be some thoughts, some stillness (meditation) and some dreaming.
Some people are optimists.