The special dreams could often help in the grieving process, both for the dying person and the relatives. «Up to 18 per cent of end-of-life dreams among our study patients were distressing in nature», Kerr writes. Kerr emphasizes, however, that death did not necessarily come as a mild embrace or that dreams and visions always bring relief and comfort. In many cases, patients experienced that the dreams provided comfort and peace, or reconciliation with difficult events in life – and even reconciliation and peace in the face of death itself. These meetings also seemed to provide more comfort than dreams about living people or other events. The closer to death the patient was, the more often the dead appeared in their dreams. Many of the dreams included encounters with dead or living friends or family members, and sometimes pets. Half of them had the experiences while sleeping, and the rest saw the visions while awake. Their findings show that the phenomenon is very common.Ī study from 2014 concludes that most patients had at least one episode where they experienced special dreams or visions that felt very vivid. The surveys are based on interviews with patients that the researchers followed through their last months, weeks and days. Now, 20 years later, Kerr and his colleagues have published a series of studies on end-of-life dreams and visions. RELATED: Normal to feel presence of the dead.There was only one thing to do: Study the topic himself. He wanted to know: How is the phenomenon experienced by patients? And what meaning do the dreams have for them and for preparing to meet death? For theologians, the dreams hinted at the existence of God.īut Kerr was not that interested in evidence for either Our Lord or Freud's theories. Freudians saw them as an expression of repressed longings. In many of the surveys, it also seemed that the researchers were most interested in interpreting the phenomenon according to their own convictions.įor parapsychologists, the dreams served as evidence of ghosts or an afterlife. The studies that existed were often based on a single event or on descriptions from doctors and nurses, not from the patients themselves. But very little solid information was available. (Photo rights: Kerr began searching the research literature. She had been very distressed by this incident, but never told her family about it.Ĭhristopher Kerr has been researching end-of-life dreams for many years. She was able to relate that this was the name of a stillborn child that Mary had had before her other children were born. Not until Mary's sister arrived the next day was the mystery solved. Was this a hallucination? A reaction to medication? No one knew of any child named Danny. However, the spectators didn’t understand a thing. She kissed and stroked the infant, whom she called Danny, and seemed extremely peaceful and full of happiness. Then, without further ado, Mary began to rock an invisible baby in her arms, Kerr writes in the book. One day the young doctor was present while the family was gathered to spend time with the ill woman. One of Kerr's first patients at Hospice Buffalo was 72-year-old Mary. Kerr's curiosity about dreams and visions before death was aroused by a very special event. However, the meeting with Hospice Buffalo was to change the young doctor's view of both death and the value of what happens in a time when all hope is really gone. “Like many physicians, I’d never considered that there might be more to death than an enemy to be fought,” Kerr writes in his book Death Is But a Dream, published in 2020. His reflex was to fight death, by any and all means. Instead, they soothe, support and comfort patients on the way to life’s end.Īs a young cardiologist, Christopher Kerr applied for a weekend job at Hospice Buffalo. The aim of health personnel who work there is not to save lives. Hospice is a place for people whose death is imminent. One person who has delved deeply into pre-death dreams is Christopher Kerr from Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo in the USA. And the figure was almost 40 per cent in a survey from Moldova. (Photo: Nasjonalmuseet/Høstland, Børre)Ī study among relatives in India showed that 30 per cent reported such experiences. She is sitting in a chair with her back to us. The picture shows what we can assume to be the artist’s family grouped around his sister Sophie, who died in 1877. The Norwegian painter Edward Munch painted Death in the Sickroom in 1893.
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