I suppose it varies quite a bit by circumstances, but the end of life is rarely a time of great involvement with the world; someone who knows they're slipping away will often try to draw back. And even if they can't, well, someone fading from a long illness likely isn't in much shape to be mentally present.
When the cancer began to take my mother, to go from a present-but-mostly-theoretical threat to a real and imminent threat, I actually didn't notice at first, because the change was so gradual, and I was too close to see it. The treatments she underwent ravaged her body, but bought her years of relatively normal life, and when the end came, it came fast- realizing that she was starting to go, I decided to sit down with her and record some conversations about her and her life so that when grandkids came along, I'd have something to show them about who their grandmother was; sadly, I only got a chance for one before her condition deteriorated to the point where she couldn't any more. Listening to it now, I'm shocked by how sick she sounds; it didn't feel that way at the time, even when I knew she was dying.
Going through her stuff in the months afterwards, I found a notebook she'd written in her last few weeks with my name it; a final message from her. I eagerly opened it, and found... one incomplete sentence, about how hard it was to write when her thoughts kept running away from her. Then I cried some more. I wasn't expecting a grand revelation or anything, but it was still a disappointment- but was it fair to expect anything better when she was a few days out from the borderline comatose state she spent her last week in? I don't think so- especially since it wasn't the only thing I'd had from her; we'd had decades together.
The last verbal exchange we had was when I was watching her, thrashing and moaning and drifting in and out of consciousness, as I waited for my little sister to arrive, to see her for what would probably be the last time, fearing that this would be the night and the car wouldn't get back in time, and when she finally arrived, I told my mother she was here- three or four times, because I wasn't sure I was getting through, until she finally snapped "I know!" in annoyance. Does that bother me? Not really. Why?
Well, because it's not the last moment that's the most important, it's the total of the moments- all the laughs and tears and arguments and everything. All the shared moments and memories. The quality AND the quantity.
