{"id":647848,"date":"2026-10-07T20:18:53","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T20:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/647848\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T20:18:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T20:18:53","slug":"deathbed-dreams-what-end-of-life-visions-can-teach-us-about-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/647848\/","title":{"rendered":"Deathbed dreams: What end-of-life visions can teach us about life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Chris Kerr was 12 when he first witnessed someone having an end-of-life vision. It was his father.<\/p>\n

In 1974, his father was dying of cancer at 42. Kerr recalls standing at the bedside. His father, who was also a doctor, reached out and played with the buttons on his shirt and told him he needed to hurry up, as they had to catch a plane to go on a fishing trip together, something they had done before.<\/p>\n

It would be the last time he saw his father.<\/p>\n

Kerr, who has worked in Hospice and Palliative Care Buffalo, New York, for 27 years, never planned to work in end-of-life care. In 1999, he was working in cardiology when he noticed an ad for \u2018moonlighting\u2019 at the hospice.<\/p>\n

Up to that point, he believed little or nothing could be done for end-of-life patients, but after joining the hospice, he soon realised there was \u201can enormous amount to do\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing present is doing, \u201c he says. \u201cBringing dignity to somebody, communicating what to expect to reduce fears, is doing. I found it so fundamentally rewarding and I felt so invigorated. Yes, we\u2019re dealing with dying, but it\u2019s also life-affirming and enriching.\u201d<\/p>\n

He made what he calls \u201cthe most purposeful change in his life\u201d and began working full-time at the hospice.<\/p>\n

\"DrDr Chris Kerr was 12 when he saw hisdying father having a vision.<\/p>\n

Although he was surrounded by death every day, he found the hospice was filled with life. He quickly recognised that the act of dying was \u201clife-affirming\u201d.<\/p>\n

These revelations unfolded after he became aware of end-of-life visions. He recalls the first time someone told him about them \u2014 a nurse at the hospice.<\/p>\n

Kerr says: \u201cThere was one patient where I had wanted to do intervention, like IVs and antibiotics, and the nurse I spoke to about that said to me, \u2018No, he\u2019s dying, he\u2019s seen his mom\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hospice care is nurse-led, and nurses are often the \u201cmost proximate to the bedside and the giving of care\u201d. That nearness and care-giving mean nurses will often have a greater awareness of what a patient is experiencing. \u201cThey are the best translators of a patient\u2019s experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

End-of-life dreams and visions have been spoken about in every culture and throughout time, says Kerr, but as death has become more of a medical or institutionalised event, \u201cthe human story of end of life is further from us\u201d.<\/p>\n

These visions are not a new phenomenon. \u201cWe\u2019re just shining a light on something that\u2019s always been known,\u201d Kerr says.<\/p>\n

Unlike medication-induced hallucinations or dreams, end-of-life dreams or visions (ELDVs) have distinctive characteristics. \u201cThey\u2019re overwhelmingly vivid, comforting, and they\u2019re organised thematically around certain things, like seeing deceased loved ones or embarking on a trip or a journey,\u201d says Kerr. <\/p>\n

During the time he\u2019s been studying this phenomenon, he has interviewed more than 1,000 patients on video.<\/p>\n

One of them, Paul, began seeing visions of his deceased wife in the weeks before his death. He describes her in clear detail, including the colour of her dress, which was always \u201ca beautiful light blue\u201d in his visions.<\/p>\n

In the video, Paul says his wife didn\u2019t speak often in the visions, but when she did, it was to tell him that she was fine, and everything was OK. His face lights up as he recounts the visions. <\/p>\n

Florence, whom Kerr interviewed five days before her death, recalls being with her deceased husband and daughter \u201cjust sitting at the kitchen table, talking and laughing, like a regular Sunday dinner\u201d.<\/p>\n

When Kerr asked her how it made her feel, she said, \u201cIt made me feel like the last 12 years [since her husband died] never existed. It was like we were always together and never separated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seeing her deceased loved ones, she said, helped her to not to fear dying.<\/p>\n

Kerr also spoke with Sierra, a woman in her 20s with a young child and an upcoming wedding. In the hospice, Sierra found it difficult to accept her terminal diagnosis, but then her deceased grandfather came to her in a dream. He told her he was proud of her, that he would see her soon and that it was ok to let go. her soon.<\/p>\n

For Paul, Florence, and Sierra, the visions were as real to them as speaking with Kerr.<\/p>\n

A love that never dies<\/p>\n

Kerr\u2019s passion for his work is evident. As we talk over Zoom about the changing culture of dying and how people approach dying, he jumps up and grabs a few relevant books, including The Way We Die Now, by Irish gastroenterologist Seamus O\u2019Mahony, and Ira Byock\u2019s The Four Things That Matter Most.<\/p>\n

It is estimated that 50%-60% of conscious dying patients experience ELDVs. Most commonly, the dying patients describe seeing deceased family and friends<\/a>, and these visions can occur months, weeks, days, or hours before death <\/p>\n

Kerr says these visions are not \u201clike looking at a photograph\u201d, they\u2019re interactive experiences with specific people. \u201cThose tend to be the people in their lives who were the sources of unconditional love.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has spent the last decade speaking with patients at the hospice about their visions, and one of the most striking things he\u2019s noticed is the absence of fear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s less about the dreams or the visions themselves, but the matter-of-factness, the acuity and awareness, and the peace these people seem to find was not what we expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

There also appears to be a timeline to these visions, with their frequency increasing as the person approaches the end of life.<\/p>\n

\n There\u2019s a predictive value to the visions. And the closer a person gets to death, the more likely they are to see a deceased loved one. People don\u2019t die in parts; they die in totality and in the context of their lives.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it makes immense sense that the closer you get to the end of life, the more reflective you are not of everyday concerns, but of what it meant to have lived and mattered. We tend to focus on our greatest accomplishments, which are our relationships,\u201d says Kerr.<\/p>\n

Reassuring message<\/p>\n

Although Kerr\u2019s work over the past 10 years was aimed at a medical audience, his research has struck a chord with people and media all over the US. The Washington Post, USA Today, and NPR have featured Kerr, and he appeared on the Oprah podcast in August.<\/p>\n

What the strong media response shows us, says Kerr, is that we have \u201cthis innate need to feel these experiences at a more human level, and I think that\u2019s what this work has done\u201d.<\/p>\n

He says he\u2019s not particularly spiritual and is careful not to over-interpret what he has seen with the patients in the hospice in Buffalo. \u201cWe\u2019re just so committed to honouring the words of the patients and their experiences, rather than extrapolating into the afterlife.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best parts of living \u2014 love and our relationships \u2014 are right there in the hospice rooms.<\/p>\n

Of the over 1,000 interviews he and his team have carried out, the visions where patients see their deceased loved ones bring them the most comfort.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove endures,\u201d says Kerr. \u201cAnd these visions show us that those who have loved us, who have shaped who we are, are never really gone. There\u2019s something elemental in love that survives our perspective of time and distance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it suggests there\u2019s a continuation of consciousness or not, I don\u2019t know, but it reveals that what we think is finality in the physical form may not be in the spiritual form, and there\u2019s a currency of love that weaves itself between living and dead, and even generations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Chris Kerr was 12 when he first witnessed someone having an end-of-life vision. It was his father.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[33970,26054,103,61,60],"class_list":["post-647848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health-body","tag-health-life","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}