What Hospice Nurses And Doctors Say Happens Before We Die

Medicine and philosophy report things we see at death give meaning and peace to our life

Before We Die, Many Hospice Workers Report Familiar Faces Come To Visit And Collect Us — Created By Author In DALL-E3

Death is a conversation you save for later. Or at least I did. As my mom got older, she’d randomly bring up in discussions what she wanted to happen with property or possessions when she died.

I’d listen, but not listen. Sometimes I’d even blow it off, and tell her we could talk about it later. After all, why would you want to imagine never seeing a loved one again? It’s morbid.

Death is final. It’s the end of a journey you go on alone, with no idea of what happens after the final few steps. Eventually, we all go on this uncertain trip too.

That’s why you avoid the conversation in your youth, but as you get older, it’s unavoidable. A series of relatives keeps getting grayer.

So far, I’ve buried my father, mom, and an older brother; consequently, I can’t avoid the conversation anymore myself. While philosophy and religion have been having this discussion forever, recently medical science has taken up the topic.

In particular, hospice nurses and doctors have been talking about their interactions with dying patients. They don’t deem to tell us what happens after we die. But their descriptions of events in the process are surprisingly similar, comforting, and dovetail with philosophy.

Namely, these doctors and nurses tell us we don’t go on this final trip alone.

A Study Of Hospice Care

“What if, at the end of your life, at some appointed hour, the lost return, distant feelings become familiar, and meaning is restored? If any of that is true, then dying is illuminating.”

— Dr. Christopher Kerr, Ted Talk: I See Dead People: Dreams and Visions of the Dying

Julie McFadden, a hospice nurse from LA, created a viral TikTok speaking about an odd commonality when dealing with dying patients. It involves end of life visions. Many of her patients see long lost loved ones anywhere from a month to weeks before they die.

McFadden says it’s so common, the hospice staff alert families this can happen, so they’re ready to deal with the visions. It’s also not hallucinations from drugs.

Moreover, the Royal College of Psychiatrists developed a manual for families dealing with end of life situations with loved ones. Their book has a whole section called “End-Of-Life-Experiences.” According to the manual:

“Towards the end of life, the dividing line between the outer world and inner world can be very thin. For example, we know now from research how, when they are nearing death, people are often called by an almost organic process to confront and resolve unfinished issues from their past, particularly with family members.”

So, visitations from dead family members, friends, or even pets aren’t unusual. In fact, those dying often say these visitors have come to “collect them,” or help them move on. Like McFadden, the College’s manual also notes these are not drug induced hallucinations, because the patients are far too lucid.

The visions are also comforting, not troubling like a drug reaction.

Dante Alighieri In The Divine Comedy Had Guides That Led Him Through Hell And Eventually To Heaven — Picture By Gustave Doré (1857) Via Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Christopher Kerr, a preeminent physician in hospice care, also had his own experiences of end-of-life visions with patients. He saw them reach out, speak to people not there, and one old woman even cradled a small baby no one else could see named Danny.

In Kerr’s Ted Talk, he reveals a relative later stated that Danny was the woman’s first child that died at birth. The loss affected her so deeply, she could never speak about it in life. But right before her death, the matter resolved itself, and brought her peace.

Despite these events happening so regularly, Kerr says the medical community was afraid to study them because of the view it may go against science. So, he did it himself, collecting stories and conducting surveys with dying patients.

In his research, Kerr found ninety percent of the patients he studied had at least one of these end-of-life dreams and visions (ELDVs). Also, when asked how real they seemed, these events rated ten out of ten in realism. They also occur both when patients are asleep and awake.

Due to his position, Kerr was also able to follow patients from their initial appearance in hospice care, as they got closer to death. As the end neared, dreams regularly went from the living to visions of the dead.

The patients rated these dreams of dead loved ones much more comforting than dreams of the living. Kerr goes out of his way to say this doesn’t prove there’s life after death. But he does explain these regular visions of the dying do provide comfort, and a meaning to life.

Philosophy has been saying something similar for a long time.

The Philosophy Of Dying

On a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Podcast, author and documentary film maker Sebastian Junger, described a near brush with death. During an aneurysm in his gut, he lost nearly two-thirds of the blood in his body. On an operating table, he had his own ELDV.

He says he experienced rising above the room, and his dead father came to help him along. At the time, he didn’t feel the pain in his body, which was in a struggle to live with doctors operating on it.

Around 1570, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne reported a similar state of peace. He’d been knocked off his horse and slammed to the ground violently. Sarah Bakewell in her biography of Montaigne, records the philosopher saying:

“There lay the horse bowled over and stunned, and I ten or twelve paces beyond, dead stretched on my back, my face all bruised and skinned … having no more motion or feeling than a log.”

While trying to move his body, Montaigne vomited up blood clots, clutched at his chest, and writhed in fits, but mentally, it was like he was far away. The motions didn’t come from him, and he didn’t feel discomfort.

Michel de Montaigne Fell From A Horse And Almost Died. Although His Body Writhed In Fits, He Felt No Pain At The Time — Created By Author In Starryai

Both Junger and Montaigne say the events changed their perception of the world, and death itself. However, the ancient Greeks didn’t wait for death. They had a ceremony to help them experience it before they died.

Author Brian Muraresku says the ancient Greeks had a ceremony called the “Eleusinian Mysteries,” which was practiced for over 2,000 years. In the ritual, initiates were led by priests, and given a sacred elixir called the kykeon, which transported them out of their bodies.

In his book The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion With No Name, Muraresku says the ceremony replicated “death and rebirth.” Furthermore, the greatest members of Greek society were initiated through the ritual. Afterwards, they were profoundly changed.

While not an ELDV, Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy is a classic of Western literature, that revolves around death. In it, Alighieri is shepherded by guides through the depths of hell, eventually into heaven.

On the trip, he notices those trying to get into heaven resolve their earthly failings in purgatory. His guide into heaven is also a long-lost love, named Beatrice. Although not always kind, she does help him resolve his lifetime struggles, so he can move on.

When you combine both this philosophical and medical information about the end of life, it gives you a different interpretation of death.

Death Isn’t A Solo Journey

My initial interpretations of death were that we all die alone. It’s part of what terrifies me, and many others. Not only do we lose those we want with us, eventually we’ll be lost ourselves to whatever comes with death.

In the end it’s a mystery no one has a firm answer to.

However, it appears both philosophy and hospice medicine can give us a few reassuring hints. First, we don’t die alone. Many experience a pleasant reunion with familiar faces who act as our Beatrice on the path to our next stage.

The meeting also resolves leftover issues in our life and gives a sense of final meaning to our time on Earth.

Second, Montaigne, Junger, the ancient Greeks, and many others tell us death can be accompanied by an exit from our own body and the pain of the event trapped within. It may not be as terrifying as we think.

All this still doesn’t make me look forward to dying, or seeing others I know go, but it does take away a bit of the fear. That unwanted conversation also becomes just a bit more tolerable.

-Originally posted on Medium 7/6/24