Dreams of deceased grandpa: Kerr excerpt #11

Dr. Christopher Kerr writes of dying patients having dreams of renewing friendships with deceased friends and relatives: 

Sometimes a patient’s consciousness may be intact without including the kind of obvious awareness of one’s surroundings the definition of the term implies. Sometimes, a patient’s consciousness is not visible to others. This was true in the case of Sierra, a vibrant young lady who was only 28 years old when she was transferred from our local cancer hospital to our Hospice Inpatient Unit (Link to Sierra Interview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8NrYTyRaJI). Upon transfer, it was clear that Sierra had only days to live yet seemed in denial about the severity of her condition; there had been so little time for Sierra to process the implications of her being transferred from hospitalized treatment to Hospice. Despite unrelenting pain and a rapidly deteriorating condition, she insistently told her puzzled Hospice nurses and doctors that “I am going to beat this.”

We prioritized symptom management, but it was also urgent to help her and her family understand that her time was limited, so they could find some level of acceptance and the words to be reconciled with the reality of physical death. We were particularly concerned for her young son. We had come to understand that end-of-life dreams and visions help patients come to terms with death, but in Sierra’s case, we naturally assumed that her denial meant the absence of such experiences.

Sierra was struggling to reconcile the different realities that were clashing around her. She needed clarity about her condition so that she could acknowledge the inevitable. This was something that the science of medicine alone could not bring forth. It was also one which, unbeknownst to her caretakers, Sierra’s end-of-life experiences had already initiated. They were preparing her for the reality which her loved ones were so hesitant to put into words, and they were doing it by bypassing language altogether.

Her care team became aware of Sierra’s inner processes only after her physician, Dr. Megan Farrell, asked Sierra if she had had any dreams. Fully lucid, Sierra replied “Yes, strange dreams and they don’t always make sense. Sometimes, I don’t remember them very well” Dr. Farrell continued, “Sierra is there anyone you have been dreaming about or someone in particular who comes to you in your dreams?” A long pause ensued. With eyes half-opened, Sierra looked over her doctor’s shoulder, smiled and whispered, “Hi Grandpa!”

Sierra had been dreaming of her deceased grandpa Howard, an army veteran and a man who had loved and nurtured her. But now, in the stillness of her Hospice room, surrounded by loved ones, what Sierra’s vision represented was so much more than just a recurring dream. It was a state of being that brought clarity and made words like “dying” and “terminal illness” irrelevant. When her mother Tammy asked: “Sierra, what is grandpa saying?” Sierra answered “He says he is proud of the young woman and mother I have become... He does not want me to suffer.” We had entered the room thinking Sierra may need an intervention but were instead subjected to one, a reminder that the best lessons are often witnessed, not given.

Sierra’s experiences at the end of her life provided her with a sense of unconditional love and guidance at the threshold of death. And for her mother Tammy, that awareness helped usher the sorrow she had not given herself permission to feel. ELDVs often pull together multiple losses and consciousnesses, those that occur across generations and wide swathes of time, across the living and the dead, for the dying as well as their loved ones. As can be seen in the video, Sierra’s care team were left in awe of an unseen but powerful exchange between the living and the dead. Sierra’s grandfather reached Sierra in a way the clinical team could not. 

 

 
Christopher Kerr, “Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness,” an essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies in response to the question: “What is the best evidence for survival of consciousness after bodily death?” Dr. Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. The full text with notes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.