Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms (14 page)

I M
ISSED
S
OMETHING

by Joanne

I’m a social worker with a hospice agency, and when I was a bereavement coordinator, I received a phone call from a woman named Bonnie. She said that she feared she’d done something wrong. Her mother, Elisa, was on our hospice-care service for about six to eight months. As her health deteriorated, she was unable to talk much, so she said very little to her daughter.

As she got closer to death, however, Elisa began to speak about her husband who had died 20 years earlier, saying, “He’s coming to visit.” She pointed up over the bed and called out, “Arthur!”

Upset about hearing her mother talk to her dead father, Bonnie told her, “Mom, you know that Dad died years ago.”

She felt that it was important for Elisa to acknowledge the fact that her husband was gone. In essence, her daughter was trying to make her “snap out of it.”

“This happens quite a lot,” I explained to Bonnie.

“People often call out names of loved ones who are already deceased.”

“Right.” Bonnie seemed irritated. “Seeing dead people is normal.”

I backed off, unwilling to argue with someone who was losing her mom. A few months later, after Elisa had passed away, Bonnie called me out of the blue. “I missed something,” she said. “My mother was trying to tell me about something that was happening, and I wasn’t able to see it.”

I gently explained (as if I’d never mentioned it before) that her experience wasn’t unusual. “Sometimes we’re so focused on taking care of our loved ones—making sure they’re comfortable and have whatever they need—we can miss things along the way. Your mother wasn’t in distress; in fact, she was talking more at the end, which she hadn’t been doing.”

Bonnie continued to feel upset and started to cry. “I feel so guilty, like we should have talked about it,” she confessed.

“I just thought Mom was disoriented, and I really believed that the best thing to do was tell her what was real and what wasn’t. I never considered the possibility that what she was experiencing
was
real.”

I felt for Bonnie. This isn’t the first time I’d counseled family members who thought they’d missed a sign and were left with great regret. As a social worker, I think we could do more to prepare our patients and their family members. We need to talk openly about deathbed visions. We already advise people on so many other issues, such as how to deal with shortness of breath as well as managing pain levels with medication. We discuss the emotional aspects of leaving others behind, saying things like, “It’s okay to let go and say good-bye when your loved one’s life is over.” We share all these details, yet we rarely say, “A deceased loved one might come to greet you.” We never tell our patients that there’s a difference between near-death awareness and a near-death experience. We don’t normalize these occurrences so that people are prepared.

Elisa never came out of focusing on her deceased husband. I can’t help but wonder what more I could have done to prepare her family for bereavement. Often, the attending social worker for a dying person ends up facilitating a bereavement group for the loved ones, and I’ve thought long and hard about how to help Bonnie with the pain of missing her mother as well as her regret over not acknowledging what Elisa was seeing.

I suggested to Bonnie that while she missed the visitation, she had completely been there for her mother. And even more important, Elisa didn’t miss her husband’s visit. After all, in the end, such experiences are really more for the dying person.

In the world of end-of-life care, we’ll never know all the answers or see all the mysteries of death revealed, but we’ll each figure it out for ourselves as we go along.

In the earlier chapter titled “Part I,” the many accounts of
deathbed visions and the dying process were told by doctors and
nurses; and in this section, I shared stories from mental-health
professionals. As you’ve seen, their experiences are very similar. I
invite you to do your own exploration: the next time you’re with
doctors or other health-care providers who work with the dying,
ask these individuals if they have a story to share. Chances are,
they will.

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE
S
PIRITUAL AND
R
ELIGIOUS
V
ISIONS

“Jesus, I love you. Jesus, I love you.”
— final words of Mother Teresa

In this chapter, we’ll look at many examples of spiritually
themed visions. After all, we certainly can’t talk about death and
dying without wondering how God or some other higher power
fits in.

Interestingly, I’ve never come across anyone who experienced
a vision outside of his or her own faith—in other words, a Jewish
person doesn’t see Jesus, and a Christian doesn’t see Allah.

However, the belief in angels seems to transcend most religious
boundaries, and many believe that these ethereal beings play a
prominent role in the dying process. We pray that angels will gently
guide our loved ones to heaven or be there to greet them when they
arrive. We also hope that they’re watching over us on Earth.

I find it fascinating that even though angels are symbolized
or somehow represented almost everywhere we look (for example,
their images can been seen in church paintings, our home decor,
and even as guardian-angel charms or trinkets in our cars), when
someone talks about a vision involving an angel or other spiritual
figure, it’s somehow considered “fringe.”

We’ve all heard about the mysterious Angel of Death, the
scary being who arrives unnoticed and whisks us off into the
darkness. But society’s perception of this has been changing.
Take, for instance, the recent portrayal of the Angel of Death as a
kind-spirited being in the popular TV series
Touched by an Angel
.
Likewise, my close friend Marianne Williamson once remarked:
“I used to think that it would be a terrible thing to behold, but I
now realize that the Angel of Death would have to be God’s most
tender and understanding ally in order to be sent to us at such a
significant, frightening juncture.”

It’s not necessary to debate the reality of angels and other
deathbed phenomena. They’re much more than simple entities
that can be proved or disproved. They comfort us and offer us hope.
They’re part of a religious and spiritual belief system that many of
us hold sacred. And although some like to think of angels as “New
Age,” references to them can be traced back to the Old Testament.
For example, in the book of Genesis, God starts out using the word
I, but then switches to
We
. Many interpret this as referring to the
angels, who existed before creation.

There are those who firmly assert that no one dies alone; in
fact, many cultures believe that from the moment of birth to the
end of physical existence, we’re in the presence of God and angels.
In time, they’ll help us transition to a purely spiritual existence;
and they’ll also be there for those we leave behind, reminding us
that our loved ones exist beyond death.

I wanted to learn more about these extraordinary visions of
God, angels, and heaven; and I couldn’t help but wonder: Do any
rabbis believe in these visions? Do priests or nuns witness these
experiences? How do doctors, nurses, social workers, or hospital
chaplains interpret spiritual visions?

The answers to those questions are in the following pages.

I
S
T
HIS
H
EAVEN
?

by Daryl

I’ve been a radiation oncologist for eight years. I became a doctor because my natural inclination has always been to help others. My mom had cancer when I was a teenager, and I played an integral role in taking care of her during her treatment and prolonged recovery. That experience impacted me greatly, and at 16, I got certified as a nursing assistant. I worked at a hospital for two consecutive summers while I was in high school, and continued on through college. When I was in medical school, I developed an enormous respect for health-care professionals, particularly when I assisted nurses in the oncology unit.

About 30 years after my mother’s bout with cancer, she got sick again. I was an oncologist at that point and treated her at home for about six months. She died while I was caring for her, succumbing to radiation-induced colon cancer that was metastatic at diagnosis.

Physicians seem to have little understanding that their own attitudes toward death and dying strongly influence their practice patterns, including how they decide to prolong or withdraw treatment from their patients. I see a huge need in the oncology world—that is, among doctors, nurses, radiation technicians, therapists, and chemotherapy nurses—for a basic understanding of counseling skills. They all need to be more involved in end-of-life decisions and the dying process itself.

I remember a patient I once had named John, who had throat cancer. He’d been a heavy smoker and drinker in his younger years, but he’d recently developed a strong Baptist faith and abandoned his unhealthy lifestyle. I prescribed radiation therapy for him because he wasn’t a surgical candidate; unfortunately, within a year after the treatment, the cancer returned.

John soon developed lymph-node disease as well as the cancer recurrence in his throat, which was gradually choking him. Even after all the treatment options were exhausted and John passed away, I was glad to have the opportunity to provide some of his supportive care. I got to know his wife, Nicole, pretty well, and I’ll never forget the story she told me about the moment he died.

On John’s last day, he went through the usual process of losing energy and going in and out of consciousness. He was air starved (feeling a shortness of breath), but a morphine drip was making him more comfortable. As Nicole hugged her husband, she could tell that death was imminent. John’s breathing had slowed, and he was having agonal (shallow, slow, and irregular) respirations. She got into bed with him and gently held him. They were both looking at the ceiling when John told Nicole that he saw clouds above him.