Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms (3 page)

I also think that any book dealing with such extraordinary events must take a look at spiritual and religious visions as shared by members of the clergy as well as families. I’ve included many of their inspiring, heartwarming stories herein. Finally, in the last chapters of the book, I explore the other aspects of deathbed visions that I’ve described: the
trips
that the dying prepare for, and the
crowded rooms
that many see in their last moments on Earth.

My hope—my “great purpose” for this book—is to begin a conversation, a continuing dialogue for health-care professionals to discuss more than
who
died, but
how
they died; and for families and friends to take a deeper look at their loved ones’ final days with open minds and hearts.

Everyone should be able to talk openly about what they see and feel at the end of life without fear of what others may think. I invite you to reflect on the stories often told behind closed doors, and only after all of the guests have left. As I’ve looked back on the many patients I’ve been with as they died and remembered their deathbed visions, I’ve realized that in each case, the vision brought hope to the dying person and to his or her family. It gave them a different way to view death. In the final analysis, one thing is clear to me:
life ends, but
love is eternal.

CHAPTER ONE

D
EATHBED
V
ISIONS
U
P
C
LOSE

“It’s very beautiful over there.”
— final words of Thomas Edison

It’s not unusual for the dying to have visions of someone who has already passed on, yet it’s interesting to note that such a comforting phenomenon doesn’t seem to appear in other frightening situations . . . where death is not likely. For example, there are no documented cases of people being visited by deceased family members when they’re stuck in an elevator. And loved ones long gone don’t seem to show up to help when a person is lost on a hike. Yes, there are stories of visions and angels comforting and guiding individuals in extreme situations, but only when death is imminent.

I spend much of my days in at least three hospitals and a hospice, and you just don’t hear these stories from patients who are ill but
not
dying. With very few exceptions, these visions only occur when someone is clearly close to death.

Moreover, the visions people experience at the end of life are remarkably similar. For example, the dying are most often visited by a mother or mother figure. It shouldn’t be too surprising that the person who is actually present as we cross the threshold of life and take our first breath once again appears at the threshold as we take our
last
breath.

Hands passionately reaching upward to some unseen force is witnessed in many deathbed encounters. One person, for instance, recently shared that her father, who had cancer, was barely alive after a second cardiac arrest he’d had in the hospital. He was connected to every machine possible, and had a tube in his nose and another down his throat that enabled him to breathe. Suddenly, he lifted both arms up in the air, stretching and seemingly reaching toward something.

The daughter quickly showed the nurse, who responded by explaining that patients are always trying to pull their tubes out. Although the daughter pointed out that her father wasn’t touching his nose or mouth, or any of the other tubes surrounding him, the nurse continued to turn a deaf ear and increased the patient’s level of sedation. The daughter, of course, felt that something significant had occurred.

Are Visions Proof of the Afterlife?

The health-care system bears witness, but how does it actually regard the phenomena of deathbed visions? Is it accepted and formally discussed and written about, or does it exist on the fringe? In their last hours or moments on Earth, how are the patients who have deathbed visions viewed? Those outside of hospice and end-of-life-care medical establishments have long minimized and discounted the experiences of the dying; and they often attribute deathbed visions to pain medication, fever, or lack of oxygen to the brain. Discounting a patient’s experience has probably been around as long as the dying have had visions.

William James, who was a professor at Harvard from 1872 to 1907 as well as a lecturer at numerous universities, is often referred to as “the father of American psychology.” Yet in his lifetime, he was ridiculed for forming The American Society for Psychical Research. Unfortunately, we have a long-standing practice of criticizing those who look outside the traditional medical box.

While at the bedside of my patients, I often suggest to family members that there’s no point in telling their father that he’s hallucinating, or that Joseph is dead and can’t possibly be here in the room. For all we know, the veil that separates life and death is lifted in the last moments of life, and those who are dying may be more in touch with that world than with ours.

Instead of denying a patient’s reality, I respond by asking questions: “What is your loved one saying? Can you describe what else you see?” Perhaps a deceased family member is telling the patient that it’s okay to die, or maybe they’re reminiscing about growing up together. I’ve heard people tell their dying loved ones: “It’s great that Betty is here,” or “I knew that Mother would come to meet you,” or “I’m so glad Jeff is with you now.”

If you find the concept of a dead loved one greeting you on your deathbed impossible or ridiculous, consider what I finally realized as a parent: You protect your children from household dangers. You hold their hands when they cross the street on their first day of school. You take care of them when they have the flu, and you see them through as many milestones as you can. Now fast-forward 70 years or after you yourself have passed away. What if there really is an afterlife and you receive a message that your son or daughter will be dying soon? If you were allowed to go to your child, wouldn’t you?

Deathbed Visions vs. Near-Death Experiences

Deathbed visions are also known by other names, including
near-death awareness, deathbed phenomena,
and
death-related sensory experiences.
They are different from
near-death
experiences,
in which a person survives clinical death. While deathbed visions often involve a deceased messenger who appears days or moments before death, near-death experiences are out-of-body “journeys” by individuals who recall seeing light, a tunnel, and/or have an opportunity to review their lives. People usually pass on shortly after deathbed visions, whereas those who have near-death experiences survive and recount what they saw. This book focuses on the deathbed visions, trips, and crowded-rooms phenomena that the dying experience in their last days and hours on Earth.

In terms of the overall ways in which society views what cannot be easily understood or proven, there may be an unintended arrogance in the judgment of the visions presented here. Most of us think that we already know everything, and if there’s something outside our knowledge, a practical explanation must exist. We ask ourselves,
If deceased loved
ones
really
do appear to the dying, why can’t we, the healthy ones,
see them?
I believe that
if
there’s a power that lowers the veil between life and death, why wouldn’t it also have the ability to lift the veil and choose to reveal itself to certain individuals?

In my first book,
The Needs of the Dying,
I shared a story that I think says it all about the dead only appearing to those who are dying:

Roberta lay at death’s door going in and out of consciousness while her daughter, Audrey, sat attentively by her bed. Suddenly, Roberta whispered, “My mother is here. Audrey, your grandmother is here . . . she is so beautiful.”

Audrey glanced at the foot of her mother’s bed and looked around the room. “Mom, where is she? I don’t see her!” she responded frantically.

The dying woman turned abruptly to her daughter, as if withdrawing from the vision of her own dead mother, and replied sternly, “Of course
you
can’t see her—she’s here for me, not you!”

Her daughter understood the message.

More Than a Hallucination?

“There are some remarkable instances where the dying person, before the moment of transition from earth, appears to see and recognize some of his deceased relatives or friends,” wrote Sir William F. Barrett in
On the Threshold of the Unseen
in 1918. However, he added, “One cannot always attach much to this evidence. . . .” Barrett labeled the experiences as hallucinations. Despite medicine brushing these encounters aside, deathbed visions continued to be reported. Even Barrett, a distinguished physicist, began viewing these episodes as more than hallucinations and eventually became one of the principal founders of the Society for Psychical Research.

The dying being visited by deceased relatives is often a theme in the end-of-life narrative. While this archetype has been around a long time, it first appeared in scientific literature in 1924 in an article written once again by Sir William Barrett, while he was a physics professor at the Royal College of Science in Dublin. This article was unique in that it contained an interesting story that could not be explained.

Barrett’s wife, an obstetrician, was called into the operating room to deliver the child of “Doris M.” The infant was healthy; however, Doris began massively hemorrhaging. As she lay dying, the doctor was shocked to realize that the woman was having an otherworldly vision. Afterward, the doctor recounted the experience to her husband:

“Oh, lovely, lovely,” [Doris M.] said.
[Barrett’s wife] asked, “What is lovely?”
“What I
see,
” she replied in low, intense tones.
“What do you see?”
“Lovely brightness—wonderful beings.”

Doris was transfixed by what she saw. She then seemed to have even more focus and clarity:

“Why, it’s father! Oh, he’s so glad I’m coming; he
is
so glad. It would be perfect if only W. [her husband] would come too.”

Her baby was brought for her to see. She looked at it with interest, and then asked, “Do you think I ought to stay for baby’s sake?” Then turning towards the vision again, she said, “I can’t—I can’t stay; if you could see what I do, you would know I can’t stay. . . .”

She spoke to her father, saying, “I am coming,” turning at the same time to look at me, saying, “Oh, he is so near.” On looking at the same place again, she said with a rather puzzled expression, “He has Vida with him, Vida is with him.” Then she said, “You do want me, Dad; I am coming.”

William Barrett was at first skeptical of his wife’s story but was soon convinced of its accuracy once he learned the significance of Doris’s sister, Vida, appearing with her father.Evidently, Vida had died three weeks earlier, but that information had been withheld from the expectant mother. Barrett wrote that he had considered whether this vision was a hallucination, but there was no explanation for Doris’s puzzlement when she saw her sister, Vida (whom she thought to be alive), with her father.

These types of stories were slowly gaining awareness in the medical world. In nonmedical writings, however, the “transition to another world” was common in deathbed scenes. And, of course, the idea that birth is not a beginning and death is not an ending was an ever-present message in religious writings—but it hadn’t yet found a legitimate place in medicine.

Even the 1924 article featuring Doris’s deathbed vision isn’t the first to introduce an unexplainable twist into the patient narrative. Hensleigh Wedgwood, who wrote for
The Spectator,
a British newspaper circa 1711, tells a very similar story:

A young girl, a near connection of mine, was dying of consumption. She had lain for some days in a poor condition, taking no notice of anything, when she opened her eyes and, looking upwards, said slowly, “Susan—and Jane—and Ellen!” She was recognizing the presence of her three sisters, who had previously died of the same disease. Then, after a short pause, she said, “And Edward, too!” She was naming a brother who was supposed to be alive and well in India, as if surprised at seeing him in their company. She said no more and died shortly afterwards and letters came from India two weeks later, announcing that Edward had had an accident and died.