Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms (7 page)

I
’M
N
OT
C
RAZY

by Phoebe

I work as a registered nurse in palliative (end-of-life) care. I’ve been in the trenches with dying people for many years, but not all of my stories regarding visions come from hospital conversations.

One evening I was waiting to pick up my kids after a golf game they played with a rival school. Linda, another mom from my son’s class, made some small talk with me about how much homework children have these days. Any two parents can immediately finish each other’s sentences about how much school has changed from the time when they were students.

Switching gears, I asked her what she did for work.

“I’m a litigator,” Linda replied.

“You get paid to argue?” I quipped. I realized right away that she must have heard that comment more times than she could remember.

“Yes, I do,” she said, smiling.

“I should have been an attorney, too. I argue with doctors all day long!” When I explained to Linda that I worked in palliative care, she didn’t turn and run for the hills (a lot of people do!). She wanted to know if I’d ever heard of anything unusual happening when a person died. I recalled that in my experience, the more conservative an individual appears, the less likely he or she will share a story about otherworldly visions. Although Linda appeared quite reserved, I decided to be direct: “I bet you have a story about a dying loved one who had a vision.”

Instead of trying to change the subject, Linda looked around as if we were about to share a secret. Then she leaned in, and in a low voice, said, “I never told this to anyone. My aunt Rachel, who helped raise me, was 86 when she was dying. It was early in the morning, and I was the only one in the room with her. Now I’m not crazy, but it seemed like my aunt was between this world and the next—as if she were leaving the Earth plane and moving on. Then out of the blue, she said, ‘Let’s talk to your mom.’ My mom, Juliet, had passed away six years earlier, but Aunt Rachel started having a conversation with her! I even heard my aunt say, ‘I’m coming home . . . slowly, but surely.’”

The lawyer in Linda must have resurfaced because she followed up by asking, “Can you confirm that what happened to my aunt also happens to other people?”

“Yes, I can,” I told her.

“Well,” she said, “a lot happens that we don’t appreciate until we’re in the presence of someone who is dying. I happen to be a very fact-oriented person. Getting to the truth is my business, and I need facts more than I need feelings. So this experience is in contrast to who I am. I’m really
not
inclined toward this kind of story, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

I nodded as she continued.

“As I get older, I find more comfort in this. I know that the occurrence had nothing to do with me and everything to do with my aunt, but having the privilege to witness someone dying is one of my more life-affirming experiences, as odd as that sounds. It has strengthened my belief that life is eternal and that we continue to exist after we die. Have you
really
heard stuff like this before?”

“Yes, I have,” I answered.

“With a living person actually seeing someone from the other side?”

“Yes—in fact, deathbed visions are quite common.”

“Really?!” Linda sounded surprised.

“It’s true,” I assured her, “but people like you don’t usually talk about them.”

“People like me?”

I explained that I was referring to her reluctance to share her experience, and pointed out, “You probably only told me because I work in the death-and-dying field.”

“If you ever tell anyone about this, promise me that you won’t use my name.”

I assured her that I’d honor her request, but stressed that her story could help others. Linda smiled and said she liked that idea.

“It’s too bad no one told you how common these types of visions are when your aunt was dying,” I added. “Hearing someone else’s story might have helped you not feel so crazy for witnessing this. Deathbed visions occur in the presence of nurses, priests, doctors—and, yes, even attorneys. That knowledge could be comforting to people.”

Linda understood and was glad to let me share her story, as long as I kept my promise not to use her real name.

W
HAT
T
HEY
D
ON
’T T
EACH
Y
OU
IN
M
EDICAL
S
CHOOL

by Jack

After graduating from medical school, I wasn’t sure which branch of medicine I wanted to dedicate myself to. Then I did my oncology rotation at a hospital in Michigan and something grabbed me. Seeing patients who were so sick was difficult, but when the oncologists were able to give them more time or improve their quality of life, it was wonderful. And seeing patients in remission, going back to their everyday lives, seemed like the best kind of medicine for me. I decided that this was my calling.

It’s interesting being a doctor in a family. My family still sees me just as Jack, and my medical degree doesn’t give me any advantages. It’s funny when your mother’s home remedy beats out scientifically tested medicine. It keeps you humble and grounded.

When I went into oncology, it never occurred to me that I might see one of my own loved ones terminally ill. So when I got the news that my younger brother, Mike, who was just 41, had cancer, it was really hard for me to act like a doctor and not a saddened man who was afraid to lose his brother.

Mike was just hitting his stride; he enjoyed his career and was seeing a lot of success in his real-estate investments. It seemed incomprehensible that his cancer was advanced, and it was almost impossible for my family to face the reality that it might be too late. I tried to remain hopeful, but I knew too much.

As my brother became sicker, family and friends would turn to me for an update on his condition, but I wasn’t his physician. They just assumed that I would know what to do, or think of some new way to treat him. It was strange to suddenly have the respect I’d always wanted from my family, yet this wasn’t how I wanted to get it. I wanted to be the one to show the best way to heal a cut or to determine whether my nephew needed to get his tonsils removed—not to be the one to explain that Mike was dying. Watching my younger brother go through all of this was ripping me apart.

One day near the end, my mother and I were sitting with Mike, who was quiet but not sleeping. Then he suddenly started talking, as if there was someone standing right in front of him (he definitely wasn’t addressing my mom or me). Mom and I looked at each other in a way that said, “What is this?”

We soon realized that Mike was indeed talking to someone, and as we listed to the conversation, it dawned on us that he was speaking to my father’s parents. He had been very close to them and loved them both very much. When Grandma died, Mike started spending more time with our grandfather. Since my cousins and I were away at school, we were grateful that my brother was there and could visit him so often. After Grandpa died, it hit Mike very hard. So the notion that it was my grandparents who came to my brother as he was dying wasn’t that surprising.

As a doctor, it’s very easy to dismiss this sort of thing until you see it firsthand. Could my brother’s vision have been a dream state? Was it a result of oxygen deprivation? A side effect of the medications? All were possible, but for my mother and me, none of those options felt right. It felt profound. Real. Neither one of us wanted to interfere, so we just observed.

For the next few hours, Mom and I watched Mike on and off in conversation. We could never quite make out exactly what he was saying, but we could hear him call both of my grandparents by name. He also had a tender, sweet look on his face. Of all the things that we were doing for him—from end-of-life care to making sure he got the best of everything— this “visit” seemed to bring him the most comfort.

Before this episode, there was a sense of struggle and tension in the air, but now there seemed to be only peace surrounding my brother. I truly believe that it was a result of my grandparents’ visit as he died.

One family member asked me, “As a doctor, what do you make of this?” And I responded, “I don’t make anything of it as a doctor. I don’t have a scientific explanation. I only have my
own
experience to draw from. I took it at face value and knew it was an authentic part of the process.”

When my patients have similar experiences, I don’t question it as a doctor. I just accept that this is what’s going on. If it feels real to a patient, so be it. But this is definitely not the kind of thing they teach in medical school.

T
HE
R
OBE

by Zack

I’m a 32-year-old who works in end-of-life care as a nursing researcher in the psychology of trauma and loss. I became interested in this during my last year in the Army and now focus on the grieving process, particularly related to fathers who have lost children. However, my experience with deathbed visions involves a woman named Dora who was dying from kidney failure.

Dora put up a good fight, but during her last week of life, she started to go in and out of consciousness. The first time it happened, she faded out, but then suddenly seemed lucid and started talking to someone no one else could see. And as time passed, she started looking over or around her family members and me (as if we were in the way) and up at the ceiling more often, carrying on a conversation with her invisible visitor.

When her kidney failure had reached the terminal stage— the critical point—she began talking out loud to her deceased mother. “Mommy?” she asked, as if she were still a child. “Is that you?”

Those of us watching were amazed as Dora continued talking: “Mommy, you’re back!” She was clearly seeing her mother as if she were right there in the room. Dora’s voice was so genuine and adamant that I often had the urge to turn my head to look for the person she was addressing, even though I knew I wouldn’t see anyone there.

At first Dora’s daughter, Myra, was upset when she heard her mother talking to her grandmother. But then she became enthralled as she listened to her mom describe a “robe of light” surrounding her mother.

“My goodness!” Dora exclaimed. “Look at the robe you’re wearing. It’s so bright I can hardly keep my eyes on it. I’ve never seen anything like this!”

Myra, who didn’t see the vision, simply told her mother, “I love you.”

That seemed to snap Dora out of her vision, and she looked her directly in the eyes, saying, “Myra, I love you, too.” Yet soon afterward, she quickly began talking with her invisible mother again.

It was extremely beautiful to watch and was quite different from what I had ever experienced because the patient herself was completely stunned by the vision. Dora was as amazed and surprised as anyone could be that her deceased mother was in the room with her and draped in robes so spectacular and bright that she had to look away.

At one point while this was going on, I asked Myra what she did for a living.

“I teach special-needs kids in primary school.”

“And what did your grandmother do?” I asked, wondering why she was appearing in the midst of so much light.

“She was a housewife, but also spent a lot of her time volunteering at the local hospital,” Myra told me.