I have heard tell that a person who is weighed before and after death will show a weight loss (I don't know if that's true or not...it's something I read somewhere and I'd be hard pressed to find the reference now). I suppose there are scientific reasons why that would be true, but it does make one think that there is more that liquids and solids involved. I know when I held my little dog Sally (this will be short, I promise) that I felt the change in her as she died. I didn't see anything as substantial as what you describe, but I certainly could feel the release of something. I wasn't there when my father died, but here's a funky little thing that I don't completely have an explanation for (though I am sure there is a logical one). He never saw me buy my own house. I moved without changing addresses because I knew I would still pick up mail and packages at my mother's house. Quite arbitrarily, it seemed, I started getting mail with my father's name on it at my new house when he had been dead several years by then. The day I found out my Sally had cancer, I got yet another piece of mail with his name on it. I'm not going to get all fuzzy over this...the rational explanations abound. But in my heart, I know he is looking after her now. And if you don't like that explanation, that's your problem and not mine. I suppose people need comfort when a loved one dies, but I see no reason to think that what they see with their eyes and hearts is less true than a scientist's calculations. The great wonder and mystery of life (and death) is that we simply don't know everything there is to know...and we never will.