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Another "universality" - culturally at least - in death, is that of the "Deathbed Confession".
If you read any of the Reddit threads (Specifically #7) you might have noticed that many of those in their dying moments were revisited by unpleasant scenes in their past - one poster's father drowned kittens in a sack, then upon his deathbed reported his seeing his bed covered in kittens, another kindly old man reenacted a violent scene, then upon his death was found to have been a Nazi, with gold bars and teeth...and many other such tales.
Not all were of angelic visitations.
But surprisingly there were a lot of confessions - to hospice workers, priests, pastors, you have it - of crimes committed in life, generally violent, specifically rapes & murders. Most of these confessions were unsolicited - women, men confessing to having murdered their spouses, children, random murders, serial killer confessions. Confessions of soldiers at war, forgiven by the country that sent them but never themselves. As if at the last they realized that they didn't want to carry this with them to the grave, as if this final confession was enough to give some atonement.
And in some cases surely their deathbed visitations in all likelihood prompted the confessions.
Now, in those cases of those bound by marriage a great number of these murders probably went undetected. It's a simple thing to arrange an "accident" or "poison" ones spouse - and the law generally doesn't look too much into it.
In those cases where the crimes were known - missing people, and the dying attempted to expatiate upon the circumstances of the crime, disposal of the remains, etc - you wonder, how many of these are still open on the books - priests, pastors, clergy being bound to take confession and never speak of them - yet - once dead, who is hurt?
Only the living.
I mean, this knowledge could - not heal, but perhaps close a lot of wounds, and if you don't think this a common theme I'd suggest you read through the threads. I took a few hours and read through thousands. It happens a lot more often than you think.
And notice how the Catholic Church has formalized the process - Confession, Anointing of the Sick (formerly extreme unction) and final reception of holy Communion (Viaticum) - a process far older than the Church itself, the confession meant to lighten the soul, the communion to provide sustenance for the journey. In Judaism it's Vidui, in Islam Tawbah, certain Buddhist sects have Vajrasattva, all these are equivalents for Confession, and serve to put the dying at rest. But - judging from a great many of the confessions on the thread, it seems to be a deeper need, religion has merely formalized it.
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Now this is a goldmine of inspiration and so I'll lead with a couple of short articles to introduce you to the concept.
#1 - Deathbed Visitations - The NY Times
#2 - Reader Submitted Stories on Deathbed Visitations - NY Times
Now this is a common thing, as many Nurses, Doctors and Hospice Workers will attest - and is considered a sure-fire signal that somebody is close or ready to dying. And there are an abundance of threads on reddit dealing with this same topic:
#3 - https://www.reddit.com/r/hospice/comments/1828jii/on_deathbed_visions/
#4 - https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/uxrpod/do_the_dying_always_see_ghosts_of_loved_ones/
#5 - https://www.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/17ksnpf/deathbed_visions_evidence_for_their_reality/
#6 - https://www.reddit.com/r/DeathBedVisions/
#7 - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/sqhcco/nurses_of_reddit_what_where_the_most_haunting/
***
Now this is absolutely fascinating, the universality of the stories, cross-cultural, and the fact that visitors overwhelming are people near and dear to the dying and have predeceased them. Then there are the people dying who simply announce they're preparing for a trip. Stories of people being visited by pets, angels, what have you - and while many might write these off as "hallucinations" due to oxygen deprivation, or the brain breaking down, or the effects of dementia, Alzheimer's, it simply doesn't add up. Too many of the dying had no knowledge that they were predeceased by Aunt Marge, or so-and-so, and it argues against the terminal lucidity many patients experience before death, and - frankly, it's a cheap and easy "explanation" that in reality explains nothing, merely comforts those who prefer to remain "Scientific", while throwing their so-called science in their face.
Now what I find most interesting in this (well, 'most' is a bit strong, it's all pretty fascinating) is that many cultures have built up traditions - a series of steps that must be gone through in death (as in life, think of Catholicism & the 7 Sacraments), traditions codified in the Bardo Thodol, or The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Thinking logically, which in no ways is going to maneuver this minefield, one has to marvel at those experiences reported by those who've come back from the dead. First - the descriptions, of people, imaginary (Jesus on the Golfcart welcoming them to the 19th hole) and real (Aunt Marge, Parents, Children, etc). That they can report on this, as more real than real, while - technically, "scientifically" everything they experience on the "other side" - presuming that there is one - should be in point of fact be very much different that what they experienced on this side. Vision - eyes closed - none. Hearing - dead, taste, dead, and so on down the line. All experience in this world is in some ways bound up with our physical being.
And - obvious to everyone - why do the people so often appear to the dying as they knew them in life?
From this I'd conclude that a good many of these experiences, or all of them, are simply the 'dead' - or some agent of the dead, a psychopomp, if you will, coming to help someone transition or grow into their next sphere of existence. Perhaps this then is the meaning of life, to attenuate our senses to the various physical realms, then evolving into the next one. In any event, something to consider.
Now this is just a beginning in the fascinating field of post-mortem psychology and spirituality, and one in which we're all going to sooner or later come to our own conclusions, but - well, it doesn't hurt to ponder the possibilities.
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I haven't abandoned my interest in chemistry, just finding different ways of expressing it. And as over the winter I'd developed an interest in crystal growing, what with the lab-grown diamonds and other gems (most of which one way or another we've found means to synthesize, I merely want the high pressure environment and a few tens of thousands of dollars equipment. Actually, sapphires and rubies can be done with reasonably basic chemistry, it's the other gems that need the high pressure chemistry).
Anyways, looking at solvents, the problem with using water as a solvent (called the universal solvent, because it dissolves more substances than anything) is that crystals produced this way also tend to dissolve in water. It's ease and universality are also it's downfall.
Then there's Alkahest, a theoretical universal solvent first conceived by Paracelsus, which you can read about here:
Link: Wiki on Alkahest
That's a gold mine of a link that can take you any number of directions.
***
Of course, smarter than me, you've already figured it out. There can be no such thing as a universal solvent, it would by it's nature dissolve the containers that were used in it's manufacture, the beakers and test tubes, stir sticks, the floor, and it would keep on dissolving until it's essence were used up...
***
But in fact there is a Universal Solvent, one so obvious nobody, not even Paracelsus conceived it.
Time. And it never runs out and devours all things...
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I can find no reputable news sites to link to for this, so you'll have to do your own research.
But a curious tale nonetheless. First reported in 2016, the lede is that after the 2011 Tsunami that hit Japan, in which some 16, 000 people were killed/disappeared, Taxi Drivers started getting "Ghost Passengers", people who needed a ride home, usually from the zone of disaster, only to disappear before being dropped off. Some 7% (Skepticism is healthy!!!) of Taxi Drivers reported this. If indeed this is a real story (and in some ways I believe it is) than you could safely presume that number to be a great deal higher. Most people prefer to keep tales like this to themselves.
In any event, a curious look at how collective trauma and grief imprint itself upon our collective consciousness, and how we might deal with it. IN this there are echo's of "The Vanishing Hitch Hiker", wherein a driver picks up a hitchh-hiker only to have him or her disappear before they get home. This is often followed by the driver confirming the circumstances of the disappearance or tragedy by checking with the address given them by the passenger.
Everyone loves a good ghost story, and so you can see how this grew legs. And, who knows? Maybe there's something to it...
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And - despite my laughing at all the ridiculous shit Facebook is throwing at me, there's the very real concern - AI is still in it's idiocy stage, garbage in, garbage out, but soon - maybe a year, maybe 2 or three, the results are going to start to be indistinguishable from reality. An AI hallucination of the worst sort. And all the possibilities of the internet - already hard enough to find good information - all these things are going to be destroyed.
There will be a very big market for a carefully curated internet that deals in facts and realities, whereas of late it's become a cesspool of clearly deranged AI hallucinations. And a market for an internet that delivers human generated results.
On the upside, (and you'll see this from all the "Follow Me" posts I get) - there's going to be a reckoning coming for every "Model", "Influencer", "Artist" and "Pornstar" that's going to require them to get clothes, a personality, a job and a life.
That won't be a bad thing...