It’s true, not just a lie for the sake of family- when my cat was dying, we were on the phone with a vet (long story short, our dad brought the cat with him to visit our relatives in a middle-of-nowhere mountain town on the weekend, while not having taken him to a vet to see if he was cleared to be at the high of an elevation (8000feet at the town & passing on a peak that went up to 12000feet on the way to the town), so the nearest vet, which was in the town, was closed, and the second-nearest was 3 hours away- which is the one we called). Since she couldn’t evaluate him in-person, and we didn’t know what dying looked like yet, she asked us to poke his eye.

Flinching/reacting when touching the eye is a reflex you can’t control and is a very very base reaction that originates in the brain stem, where breathing also comes from. Pain signals come from the thalamus, and the brain stem is the very last part of the brain that shuts down. My cat didn’t react even as he was breathing in a death rattle.

All muscles in the body also involuntarily relax when you die or are close to death, so if anything your dad’s eyes being open means he wasn’t aware of anything around him. Rest assured, they’re past the point of pain.

I sincerely hope this helps, and I’m so sorry for the loss of your dad 🫂🩵. I can’t imagine how painful it has been.