People sometimes report seeing a bright light during near-death experiences, but this symbolism of transition is also commonly found in dreams as we near the end of our lives.
Kirill Ryzhov/Alamy
People in palliative care who are nearing death often have vivid dreams of deceased loved ones and symbols of transition. Doctors and health workers who care for them say that these dreams often bring comfort to patients and make them less afraid of dying.
These dreams “offer psychological relief and meaning to people facing the end of life,” writes Elisa Rabitti of the local palliative care network in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Rabitti led a team that surveyed 239 local palliative care doctors, nurses, psychologists and other health professionals about dreams told to them by terminally ill patients.
The most common dreams and visions that occurred while people were awake involved encounters with deceased family members or pets. For example, one woman had a dream about her deceased husband in which he told her, “I’m waiting for you.” These dreams provided a sense of inner peace and helped people accept death, Rabitti and her colleagues write.
Others dreamed of doors, stairs, or light, with one describing a dream of climbing barefoot to an open door filled with white light. The authors of the study write that this may be a coping mechanism to explore and understand their impending transition from life to death.
Most often, people felt “calm” and “comforted” in relation to these end-of-life dreams and visions. Only a small fraction of them — about 10 percent — were disturbing, including one where one person saw a monster with her mother’s face dragging her down.
Christopher Kerr at the Buffalo Hospice in New York State also conducted research that showed that dreams of deceased loved ones are very common in the terminally ill. they become more frequent as death approaches. “What’s really interesting is that it’s not a coincidence who comes to you – it’s always people who have loved you and provided for you,” she says. His research also found that dreams of “getting ready to go” are common. For example, “patients often describe dreams of packing or getting on a bus,” he says.
Dreams and visions at the end of life can “bring people back together,” says Kerr. For example, he once saw a 70-year-old woman, the mother of four grown children, move her hands as if she were holding a child while she had visions of her first child who died dead. His loss was too hard for her to talk about, but his metaphysical return at the end brought her comfort. “We’ve also had a lot of veterans, and whatever wounds or burdens they carry, they’re often talked about in their dreams at the end of their lives,” says Kerr.
The frequency of these dreams and visions increases as death approaches because “dying is a progressive sleep,” Kerr believes. “[The people are] in and out of sleep, which seems to make their dreams more vivid and vivid—they often say it is not a dream; it’s real.”
We often think of the end of life as a sad and scary experience because “there’s a visceral threat response built into our survival,” says Kerr. But the final weeks of a terminal illness can be rich with love and meaning, and patients “inevitably come to something that is accepted,” he says. “One of the most striking things is the absence of fear.
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