Through the visions
and experiences common to all dying people, you
will learn more about the spiritual journey that
begins with death. According to recent studies,
only about 10% of people are conscious shortly
before their death. Of this group, 50% to 67%
have DBVs. The following are excerpts
from Dr. Carla Wills-Brandon's excellent book,
One Last Hug Before I Go, reprinted by
permission. Also included are examples from
Melvin Morse's book,
Parting Visions, his research on DBVs.
Although DBVs can be
found in the literature and lore of all ages,
they were rarely mentioned in the scientific
literature until the late 1920's when they were
studied by
Sir William Barrett, a physics
professor at the Royal College of Science in
Dublin.
He would never have considered
examining such a topic had it not been for an
experience told to him by his wife, an
obstetrical surgeon. On the night of January 12,
1924, she arrived home from the hospital eager
to tell her husband about a case she had had
that day.
She had been called into the
operating room to deliver the child of a woman
named Doris (her last name was withheld from the
written report). Although the child was born
healthy, Doris was dying from a hemorrhage. As
the doctors waited helplessly next to the dying
woman, she began to see things. As Lady Barrett
tells it:
Suddenly
she looked eagerly towards part of
the room, a radiant smile
illuminating her whole countenance.
"Oh,
lovely, lovely," she said.
I asked,
"What is lovely?"
"What I
see," she replied in low, intense
tones.
"What do
you see?"
"Lovely
brightness - wonderful beings."
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It is
difficult to describe the sense of reality
conveyed by her intense absorption in the
vision. Then - seeming to focus her attention
more intently on one place for a moment - she
exclaimed, almost with a kind of joyous cry:
"Why, it's
Father! Oh, he's so glad I'm coming;
he is so glad. It would be perfect
if only W. (her husband) would come
too."
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Her baby
was brought for her to see. She looked at it
with interest, and then said:
"Do you
think I ought to stay for baby's
sake?"
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Then,
turning toward the vision again, she said:
"I can't - I
can't stay; if you could see what I
do, you would know I can't stay."
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Although the story
thus far was compelling, skeptics could still
argue that it was nothing more than a
hallucination due to lack of blood or triggered
by fear of death. Indeed Sir William Barrett may
have made that very point to his wife. Then he
heard the rest of the story. It seems that the
sister of Doris, Vida, had died only three weeks
earlier. Since Doris was in such delicate
condition, the death of her beloved sister was
kept a secret from her. That is why the final
part of her deathbed vision was so amazing to
Barrett.
She spoke to her
father, saying:
"I am coming," turning at the
same time to look at me, saying,
"Oh, he is so near."
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On looking
at the same place again, she said with a rather
puzzled expression:
"He has
Vida with him," turning again to me
saying, "Vida is with him."
Then she
said, "You do want me, Dad; I am
coming."
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Could all
this have merely been wish fulfillment
expressed in the form of a
hallucination? Barrett considered such
an explanation, but he rejected it
because among the apparitions of the
dead was someone whom Doris had not
expected to see. Her sister, Vida, had
died three weeks before. This explains
why Doris was a bit surprised when she
saw her sister. This story was so
inspirational to Barrett that he
undertook a systematic study of deathbed
visions. His was the first scientific
study to conclude that the mind of the
dying patient is often clear and
rational. He also reported a number of
cases in which medical personnel or
relatives present shared the dying
patient's vision.
The work of
Sir William Barrett did not contribute
to the theory that these visions were a
form of wish fulfillment. In fact the
deathbed vision often did not portray
the type of afterlife the dying
expected. For example, Barrett reported
several children who were disappointed
to see angels with no wings. In one such
case he described a dying girl who sat
up suddenly in her bed and said,
"Angels, I see angels." Then the girl
was puzzled. "Why aren't they wearing
wings?" If deathbed visions were simply
a fantasy of the mind, says Barrett, why
did this little girl see something
different from her expectations?
John was an
eleven-year-old patient of Melvin Morse
who was dying of lymphoma. In his last
days, he was hospitalized with severe,
untreatable pneumonia. Though he was
having difficulty breathing and was in
constant pain, he was given very few
drugs such as morphine and Valium
because they made breathing more
difficult.
Three days
before John died, a circle of loved ones
gathered around his bed. They were
startled when John suddenly sat upright
and announced that Jesus was in the
room. He then asked for everyone to pray
for him.
At about
three a.m., John sat up again, startling
the four people who had gathered around
the bed to pray.
"There are beautiful colors
in the sky!" he shouted.
"There are beautiful colors
and more colors. You can
double jump up here, double
jump!"
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At four a.m.
an extraordinary event occurred. They
were joined by a woman who said that she
had received a strong premonition that
she had to visit John right away. She
was not known to John's parents, but her
son was a playmate of John's. She had no
explanation for why she would suddenly
visit John at four a.m. except to
explain that she had had a vivid dream
about John and had felt a need to visit
him that was overpowering.
By dawn, it
seemed that life was almost over for
John. His breathing was labored, and his
heart was pounding like that of a
marathon runner's. Even then, little
John had more to communicate. Opening
his eyes wide, he asked his grieving
parents to "let me go."
"Don't be afraid," he
said. "I've seen God,
angels, and shepherds. I see
the white horse."
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As sick as he was, John still begged his
family not to feel sorry for him. He had
seen where he was going, and it was a
joyous and wondrous place.
"It's wonderful. It's
beautiful," he said, his
hand held out in front of
him. |
Soon he laid back and fell asleep. John
never regained consciousness and died
two days later.
John's
visions and the incidents surrounding
them intrigued Dr. Morse. John's mother
believes that through God's mediation,
John communicated with his friend's
mother. Although she knew he had been
hospitalized, it was during the period
of his most powerful visions that she
had her vision of John. Although Dr.
Morse has nothing scientific to base it
on, Dr. Morse believes coincidence was
too great for these periods of vision
activity not to be connected in some
way.
The following
deathbed account was told to Melvin
Morse by a physician in Utah.
A
five-year-old boy was in a coma, dying
from a malignant brain tumor. He had
been in the coma for three weeks and was
surrounded almost the entire time by his
family. They encircled his bed and
prayed constantly for his recovery,
taking only brief breaks to eat and
rest.
At the end of the third week, the
pastor of the family's church came into
the hospital room and told them a
remarkable story. He'd had a dream, he
said, in which the boy told him:
"It's my time to die. You
must tell my parents to quit
praying. I am supposed to go
now."
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The pastor was nervous about delivering
this message to the family. Still, he
said, it was a message too vivid to
ignore.
"It's as though he was right
there in the room, talking
to me face to face."
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The family members accepted the
minister's dream as a message from their
son. They prayed, they touched his
comatose body, and they told him that he
would be missed, but he had permission
to die.
Suddenly, the
boy regained consciousness. He thanked
his family for letting him go and told
them he would be dying soon. He died the
next day.
Perhaps the
most important aspect of this story is
its cathartic nature. This family was
allowed to assuage its grief because
they knew that their son was ready to
die. Their resentment of life's process
and of God's will was replaced by the
assurance that something mystical had
taken place.
The following
report comes from Carla Wills-Brandon's
research and provides us with a
beautiful example of how medical
personnel can use these visions to
positively assist in the dying process.
Our son passed over on August 4, 1997. I
believe he did have deathbed visions.
The first one happened after he had a
seizure. His heart stopped, and after he
came back to life, he seemed all right.
But then he looked at me and said:
"Mom, what happened to me?" |
I
didn't want to scare him, so I told him
he had fainted. He replied:
"Whatever happened to me was
wonderful! It felt so good!
I liked that!" |
When my husband visited with the doctor
he told him what our son had said. The
doctor said to him:
"You do know that what your
son experienced was a
near-death experience." |
When the
second vision took place, my son had
been unconscious for over an hour.
Suddenly, he sat up in an upright
position! This happened very quickly. We
were so shocked, we didn't say a word to
him. We thought, "My God, he came out of
it!" so we just sat and stared.
He looked
toward the foot of his bed and then up.
He was looking as though he were seeing
more than one person. He turned his head
slightly from side to side. The look on
his face was like he was confused with
what he was staring at. Then, after a
few minutes, he laid back down and
looked very peaceful. He returned to his
unconscious state and at this point all
we could do was hold him. Not long after
that, our son went into cardiac arrest
and passed on.
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