The bereaved experience: Kerr excerpt #21

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

The human grief experience is multidimensional, flexible, and personal. Bereaved family members and caregivers learn to adjust to a world without the deceased in myriad ways. What remains a constant, however, is 1/ the higher level of acceptance achieved by the dying and the bereaved alike when they get to witness the life-affirming, material, and transformative effects of end-of-life experiences 2/ the triggering of their own richer emotional and spiritual inner experiences. In our studies, the bereaved describe deriving peace and reassurance from the knowledge that their family member felt at ease and loved in their last moments. For example, the elderly sister of one of our patients shared that “when he told me that he saw his favorite sister (deceased) hold out her hands to him, it made me feel comforted because I knew it comforted him.” Caregivers repeatedly and explicitly use words that denote contentment rather than mourning: “He did find comfort talking to and seeing people who passed before him. He was not afraid or scared – he had told me.”

Many bereaved family members make sense of their dying relative’s end-of-life dreams and visions by drawing on their belief in the afterlife, God, angels, or heaven. That is what the rather agnostic Michele did after her daughter Ginny’s last conversation with God. But how each family caregiver chooses to make sense of their loved one’s end-of-life dreams and visions matters little. What is remarkable is how the meaning making sometimes develops independently of one’s interpretive framework, since Michele was originally agnostic and was swayed by her daughter’s ELDVs. These experiences help the dying and their loved ones alike work through the pain of loss by creating continuity and presence across time and death.

The therapeutic quality of end-of-life experiences extends to the bereaved in ways that can never be fully accounted for if we merely approach them as representations or memories. It embodies, for caregivers as much as for the dying, the possibility of being reunited, and it allows them to adjust to life without their loved one while maintaining a continuing bond. The desire and need for connectivity remain a constant across dying and grieving, death and bereavement.

Michele and Kristin both responded to their child’s death with the same paradoxical disregard for the separation death supposedly entails. They both still talk about and to their respective daughters on a daily basis. They dream about them. They both continue decorating their homes for the holidays for their little girls’ sake. They do it because “Ginny expects it” and “Jess would be upset with me if I ever skipped a year”.

Like Michele, it is in her daughter’s last end-of-life experience that Kristin finds the comfort she needs. In particular, Jess’s vision of her mother’s deceased friend Mary, whom she identified as “an angel”, is what provides Kristin with the reassurance that her little girl’s transition transcended the emotional and physical toll of death.

Michele worked through the pain of grief in ways that echo Kristin’s emotional trajectory. She too was awed and comforted by her daughter’s rich inner world and by the extraordinarily soothing quality of her end-of-life experiences. “She is always teaching me something”, Michele said two days before Ginny’s passing when her daughter was no longer responsive. This too was an extension of the remarkable effects of Ginny’s end-of-life experiences. Michele was left to question her own belief system. “Who knows?” she concluded, throwing up her hands in surrender, “Maybe there is a castle. I no longer know what not to believe.”

Like Kristin, Michele is now moved by mementos, pictures, and toy animals that recall her daughter’s presence. A rainbow appears and makes her smile. Heart shapes in clouds, rocks, and water drops are evidence of Ginny’s presence. She often takes refuge in Ginny’s room which she has left untouched. Bereavement has become a steady and gentle companion, a process and extension of the continuity that Ginny’s end-of-life experiences represented.

In the midst of immense tragedy, Michele has found solace and meaning in the same love and evidence of consciousness that permeated her daughter’s end-of-life experiences and whose cascading influence will sustain her until the day, she says, she too finds her way to Ginny’s “castle.”

As our study on the dreams of the bereaved suggests, patients’ end-of-life experiences seem to find a reflective counterpart in their loved ones’ dreams. Our quantitative study conducted at Hospice shows that many recently bereaved individuals experience vivid and deeply meaningful dreams themselves that feature the presence of the deceased. Prevalent dream themes included  pleasant past experiences, the deceased free of illness or at the time of death, in the afterlife appearing comfortable and at peace, and the deceased communicating a message. These themes overlap significantly with previous models of bereavement dream content. As with ELDVs, the specific effects of these dreams on bereavement processes include increased acceptance of the loved one’s death, comfort, spirituality, sadness, and quality of life, among others. These results support the theory that dreams of the deceased are highly prevalent among and often deeply meaningful for the bereaved who have them. Again, as with ELDVs, a positive growth or transformation in the person have them hinges on the continued presence of predeceased loved ones.

While this study does not assess whether or how the dreams of the bereaved are related to or different from ELDVs, the coincidence in content and effect is remarkable and noteworthy. For example, one participant wrote ‘‘[the dream] put my mind at peace about my brother’s death. I miss him very much, but I know he is in God’s hands and happy.’’ Others described how their dreams helped them to retain a connection with the deceased: ‘‘I feel closer to mom than at the time of her death. At the time I felt cut off. Now feel as if I was reconnected in at least a small way.’’ Some explained how their dreams intensified their feelings of grief (‘‘My sister and I cared for our mother around the clock. The dreams just make me sadder and I miss her when I wake up’’) or support (“My mother speaks to me while I dream. She tells me things about situations in my life and how to handle them. I get to hold my mother in my dreams and get to feel her warmth and love’’). Another participant had a dream of her [deceased] mother walking on the beach and holding the hand of a small boy named Eric. Her parents had previously lost a baby and named him Eric “who had died before Jane was born. Eric was to be our last of three children, but when he died, we had Jane.’’

Like ELDVs, the dreams of the bereaved bring back the departed in moments of transcendence where the consciousness of the recently departed is summoned to bring peace, sometimes resolution, and always love. 

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.