Death Is But a Dream

Description

The first book to validate the meaningful dreams and visions that bring comfort as death nears.

Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as “more real than real,” these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life’s meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance.

Drawing on interviews with over 1,400 patients and more than a decade of quantified data, Dr. Kerr reveals that pre-death dreams and visions are extraordinary occurrences that humanize the dying process. He shares how his patients’ stories point to death as not solely about the end of life, but as the final chapter of humanity’s transcendence. Kerr’s book also illuminates the benefits of these phenomena for the bereaved, who find solace in seeing their loved ones pass with a sense of calm closure.

Beautifully written, with astonishing real-life characters and stories, this book is at its heart a celebration of our power to reclaim the dying process as a deeply meaningful one. Death Is But a Dream is an important contribution to our understanding of medicine’s and humanity’s greatest mystery.”Based on deep experience, this loving, emotionally wise book will help many people find the path to love, acceptance and meaning as they face life’s end.”–Katy Butler, author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door and The Art of Dying Well

“Remembering the revealing end-of-life experiences my own father had, I was fascinated by this book. It treats an area of medical ignorance and societal naiveté. Whether you have a loved one nearing the end, or are contemplating what may lie beyond this life, you’ll find that Dr. Kerr’s book brings meaning and even beauty to our final stage. I recommend it highly for anyone with a finite lifespan.”–Dale Bredesen, MD, author of the New York Times bestseller, The End of Alzheimer’s

“A beautiful portrait of the human capacity for transcendence at the end of life. This book will inspire you reflect on the love and meaning you have experienced in your own life, and help you listen to, and be with, those nearing the end of their lives.”–Kelly McGonigal, PhD, author of The Joy of Movement

“Reflections on death are not new. Yet, so many wish to separate death from life forgetting that death, in fact, is part of life. This reality is shared with us by a hospice physician who, himself, learned so much from the dying. And what did he learn? That by being truly present with those who are dying, one learns how to live.”–James Doty, MD, author of Into the Magic Shop

“In this fascinating book, we meet the dying whose dreams, both sad and sweet, are powerful, beautiful medicine for the soul; theirs and ours.”–Steve Leder, author of More Beautiful Than Before; How Suffering Transforms Us

“Penetrating and empathetic…This comforting guide will reassure the dying and their loved ones while providing instructive portraits of end-of-life patients for those who work in medical and healing professions.”–Publishers Weekly, starred review

“An uplifting and reassuring work testifying to the deep restorative and spiritual—though not necessarily religious—nature of pre-death visions.”–Kirkus ReviewsChristopher Kerr, MD, PhD, is the CEO and chief medical officer at Hospice Buffalo. Born and raised in Toronto, Kerr earned his MD as well as a PhD in neurobiology and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester. His research has received international attention and has been featured in The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and the BBC. He lives on a horse farm in the small town of East Aurora, New York.

It is true that everyone will have come across the story of an old couple who died within days of each other. I have known many. I met people who followed their partner into death in the absence of any clear medical prognosis. We all knew that it was due to a broken heart, and that this was neither a metaphor nor a romanticized assessment. It is now established as medical fact that a real-life broken heart can lead to cardiac consequences. The medical diagnosis has a name: broken-heart syndrome, or in medical parlance, stress-induced or takotsubo cardiomyopathy. It usually happens quietly, surreptitiously, with no further ado.

A broken heart best describes what happened to ninety-year-old Bernard—Benny to his loved ones— shortly after his wife Gloria’s passing. At the time of Gloria’s death, Benny had been in good health. At eighty- even, he was active, gregarious, and independent, visiting a lifetime’s worth of friends and family. He loved to drive, and did so daily around Buffalo, the town in which he had lived his whole life. After Gloria’s precipitous death from an infection, he was inconsolable. He kept wishing for an early death, imploring God to let him rejoin his “Glo.”

Benny would visit the cemetery daily, sometimes up to three times a day. There, he would sit or kneel in front of Gloria’s gravestone, praying and talking to her, resurrecting her in memory. When his daughter Maureen tried to dissuade him from prostrating himself, his rebuke was immediate. “To each his own,” he answered.

On Valentine’s Day 2016, exactly two months after Gloria’s passing, Benny insisted on sticking to his daily routine despite subzero temperatures. When Maureen arrived at the cemetery, she could not refrain from asking the question whose answer she knew too well: “What are you trying to do? Kill yourself?” Benny did not miss a beat: “I could only wish.” This is the same man who had found it in himself to tell his dying wife that it was “okay to let go now.” But it wasn’t, not then, not now, not ever.

On that fateful day, with temperatures plummeting to mi­nus 15, Maureen found her father walking around Gloria’s tombstone. He looked like he was going around in circles, reso­lute and heavy-footed as he worked his way through the snow. From a distance, she first assumed it was the cold that kept him moving, but she soon noticed that he was walking in too delib­erate a pattern and was retracing his steps. As she drew closer, she saw that he had been carving a heart in the snow around her grave.

Benny was usually solemn and reflective after his visits to the cemetery. Things were different that evening. He appeared breathless and uncomfortable. His status worsened over the next forty-eight hours, and by the time he was taken to the emergency room, he was critically ill. He was diagnosed with having suf­fered a heart attack that had been stuttering over the past few days. Benny’s heart literally broke on Valentine’s Day.

The absence of immediate medical intervention had caused an irreversible heart condition that required hospice care. In the space of forty-eight hours, Benny had gone from being fully in­dependent to being unable to fend for himself. He had to move in with his daughter. He could no longer visit Gloria’s grave, so he began to visit her in his dreams. Or, as his daughter evoca­tively stated, “He is living in his dreams now.” She could hear him at night, singing to his beloved Gloria in Polish, the shared language of their upbringing. This once overly social man would awake only briefly to eat, preferring to return to bed so he could close his eyes and revisit his wife.

Old couples have much to teach us about true love. Their bond requires no big declarations, loyalty tests, or dramatic endings. It just needs and takes time. It unravels and infuses every fiber of their being, so much so that they cannot conceive of living without it. And so they don’t. They move on through life’s obstacles with the certainty of its existence. They continue to feel and believe in it even when the person through whom that love originated leaves them. For elderly patients especially, their love for their other half is who they are. Job, ambition, hobbies, mortgage, and plans have come and gone. What is left and what matters is the relationships they have maintained, cherished, and tended to through a lifetime of small gestures and greetings, loving glances and humorous words, shared sto­ries and forgiven faults.

It may be that our cultural representations of romantic love have it all wrong. Love at its best, deepest, and strongest is not about youth, impulsivity, drama, or despair. It is about con­stancy, patience, trust, forgiveness, and sustained acceptance. It is about letting go of the living and not letting go of the dead.

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