Why are people so anxious to find out when someone will die?
I know a doctor who can smell when someone is going to die.
No, she doesn’t sniff the air and announce your fate as you walk by. And there is nothing magical about it. She explained to me that in the moments or even hours before someone’s soul leaves, a smell fills the room that indicates that the end is near. I have heard it theorized that it is the result of cell breakdown; perhaps it is something else entirely. She will occasionally let us know that a patient seems to be imminent, and she is usually right.
Whatever the explanation for it, I do know one thing: I can’t smell it. I’ve asked her to teach me, which she has tried to do. But I’ve never been able to detect it.
There are other indications that a person’s neshamah will soon leave this world, and for some of them I have nothing but a spiritual explanation. Two sisters who sat by their mother just before she died told me that they distinctly smelled the scent of an esrog in the room — a whiff of Gan Eden, perhaps. And there is certainly reference to this possibility in the more mystical sources of the Torah.
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