Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms (12 page)

“Is that why she keeps pointing and looking in the corner of the room? Does she know who she’s seeing?” one daughter asked. “I’m not so sure about this. Maybe Mom is hallucinating or having some type of psychiatric issue caused by a medication.”

“I used to work in a psychiatric unit for adolescents,” I told the family. “I don’t believe that Maria is hallucinating or experiencing any mental issues. She looks very peaceful.”

Anna, who was still listening to her sister talking, said, “It’s our mother and grandparents. She’s really happy to see them again. And she’s speaking Czech because they don’t know any English.”

It was amazing to watch this once unresponsive woman suddenly become animated and lively. It was also heartwarming to know how happy and relieved Maria’s daughters were.

When I started in hospice, I was skeptical of deathbed visions and anything that referred to the afterlife. But the more I’ve heard about these stories—and have even been in the room with many of my own patients as they were visited by deceased loved ones—it makes me question my own spirituality and religious upbringing. Accepting the truth has been a growth experience. The fact that visions bring comfort to so many reminds me that not everything can be seen or logically explained.

Y
OU
D
ID
W
HAT
?!

by Ellen

As a counselor in private practice, I’ve had many encounters with terminal illnesses and death. Yet despite all of that experience, I still wasn’t prepared when I lost my sister, Mary Beth. My parents had both died when I was in my 20s, so my family consisted of my sister, my brother, and myself. When Mary Beth was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, it was an especially tough blow.

During her final weeks in the hospital, my brother, Larry, and I were taking turns so that our sister was never alone. I was trying to be realistic about the grim situation, but Larry kept hoping she’d beat the cancer.

One night when I was alone with Mary Beth, she was in terrible pain. “Are you okay?” I asked her. “What do you need?”

She groaned. I leaned in and gently said, “What are you trying to say?”

“I want to go now,” she mumbled. “Mom and Dad are calling me . . . they want me to go with them.”

I didn’t understand what she meant. I just couldn’t comprehend it at first. I thought that she must be in a lot of pain and felt so sorry for what she was enduring. All I wanted to do was try to give her a bit of relief, so I called the nurse and asked her to give my sister some pain medication.

“Do you really want to go to Mom and Dad?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied quietly, reaching her hands up toward the ceiling.

I started to cry and said, “Please don’t leave me. I love you so much.”

“Let me go, Ellen,” Mary Beth pleaded. “Mom and Dad are here for me.”

While we waited for the nurse to administer the drugs, I silently acknowledged that my sister was seeking a more permanent kind of relief. I thought about calling Larry (he’d left the hospital a few hours earlier) to let him know that Mary Beth was seeing our dead parents, but I decided to let him get a good night’s sleep and call him first thing in the morning.

My sister continued to repeat that our parents were waiting for her. Without a great deal of forethought, I told her, “I love you, and if you want to go with Mom and Dad, you can.”

The nurse arrived and gave Mary Beth some pain medication, and she and I both fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning and called my brother to tell him what had happened, he drove right over to the hospital. By the time he got there, though, our sister had taken a turn for the worse and was in an unresponsive state. Larry said her name a few times and gently shook her. “What happened?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I just told her that if she needed to go, it was okay.”

“You did what?!” Larry was irate. “How could you do that? If she dies, I’ll never forgive you for telling her it was okay to go!” Even after I told him that Mary Beth kept pleading with me to let her go with our parents, he still remained furious with me.

My sister died later that day, and Larry became fi xated on what I’d said to her. He also completely dismissed the idea that our parents may have come to her bedside to bring her home.

I derive some comfort from the fact that my parents came to greet Mary Beth. She certainly wasn’t scared at the end; their presence brought her much peace. I also didn’t feel like I was encouraging my sister to give up or that I had the power to prevent her death—I was simply acknowledging her experience and supporting her in whatever way I could.

The vision of our parents coming to my sister made it sacred and profound for me, but unfortunately, my brother didn’t see it that way. To this day, he believes that because I gave her permission “to go,” I’m partly responsible for her death. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d asked her to stay. I’ll never know, but I do know that I followed my instincts. And I really hope that when it’s my time, my mother and father will come for me, too.

F
EAR
D
OESN’T
S
TOP
D
EATH—
I
T
S
TOPS
L
IFE

by Jane

I remember an incident that happened when I was in my sophomore year of premed studies. I’d always been interested in healing because my mother had died years earlier, and I’d been exposed to many physicians and hospital settings. Yet while I knew I wanted to be a doctor, I was often overcome by fear and doubt about whether or not I could make it through the years of school.

I was devastated when I got the news that my father had been diagnosed with gastric cancer. Although I was focused on my studies, I decided to take a leave of absence to help him fight the disease. As I stepped onto the cancer roller coaster, I was committed to facing the difficult challenges that were ahead and quickly learned that it wasn’t only an emotional drain, but also a financial one, since there were many necessary treatments that our health insurance didn’t cover.

Before all this happened, I’d been getting ready for the MCAT, the Medical College Admission Test, and was overcome with fear and anxiety. I knew this one exam could make or break my career in medicine. But as my father’s condition grew worse, I realized that my plan to take off a semester wasn’t realistic. This was going to be a much worse ordeal than I had imagined.

I realized that I had to face the fact that the cancer had spread and my dad was dying. It turned out that I was as terrified of losing him as he was of dying. My father had always been a fearful person, but my mother had known how to quell his fears. I’d taken over that role long ago, but Dad and I only had each other. I couldn’t imagine my life without him.

Late one night when I’d fallen asleep on the couch next to my father’s bed, I woke up hearing his voice. I looked over and saw him reaching toward the ceiling.

“Dad? What’s going on? What are you reaching for?”

“She’s here.”

“Who?”

“Your mother . . . she’s right here.”

I was in awe. Could it be true? Was it possible that she was actually in the room? “Dad,” I said, “what’s Mom saying?

Tell her how much I miss her.”

My father was mesmerized by whatever he was gazing upon, but then started speaking: “She wants us to know that there’s nothing to fear. There was never anything to fear.

She’s been watching over us, and she loves how you’ve been taking care of me. Now she’ll be watching over you and your family. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

I wondered what “family” my mother was talking about.

After all, I was single and my dad was dying. When he died the next day, I took little comfort in the words he’d said.

Both of my parents were now gone, and I felt utterly alone.

To make things worse, my savings were diminished, and I had no hope of paying for medical school.

I transferred to a local college and went on to earn my degree in psychology. I became a counselor with a private practice . . . and I met the man I would marry. Within a few years, I had a wonderful husband and two healthy children.

I knew this was the family that my mother said she’d be watching over.

Today, nearly 17 years after my father’s death, my kids are teenagers, and I’m still inspired by my dad’s vision. I recall my mother’s words: there is nothing to fear, and there never was. I now realize that fear doesn’t stop death—it stops life. After I was ultimately able to overcome my own fears and doubts, I went back to school to prepare for the MCAT, the test I had begun to study for so many years ago. I now see that while my father’s illness temporarily stopped me from going after my dreams, his vision of my mother’s encouragement brought my dreams back to life.

P
LEASE
S
HUT THE
W
INDOWS

by Maggie

I am a counselor in an inpatient hospice unit in Florida. I remember a tragic, challenging, and touching experience I had as a social worker in the late 1980s. My patient’s name was Sammy, and he was one of the first people I worked with who had AIDS. The disease was still relatively unknown during that time, so when someone with AIDS checked into the hospital, there was a lot of hysteria and fear among the health-care employees assigned to the infectious-diseases unit.

The nurses were afraid to handle anything that an AIDS patient had touched, and they always wore full gowns when they entered his or her room. Sammy’s condition was advanced, and I went to the fourth floor of the hospital to talk with him. I still recall the large room called the “skilled-care unit” that had been empty and was now being used for AIDS patients. The room was rather barren, kind of a sad place with a single vase and table. A colorful personality, Sammy loved to tell stories but never had any visitors, and we had no clue about his former life. He was there with us because he had nowhere else to go and no one to care for him.

Over the next few weeks, I watched Sammy’s condition worsen. His hair was going gray, and although he was tall and had broad shoulders, he looked utterly wasted and wrapped the blanket around himself tighter and tighter. He wasn’t really eating much, so we asked about his favorite foods. He told us that he liked turnip greens and fried chicken, so we got them for him as a special treat. There was little we could do, and it made us feel less helpless.