The Dreams of the Dying: The Comfort of Being Guided by Your Dead

In times of illness, we’re drawn closer to those in need. We endure tragedy through gestures of compassion and concern.

The global calamity of COVID-19 has brought more than death. It has also separated us from one another and from the people we love.

As a hospice physician who has spent decades at the bedsides of dying patients, I’ve come to realize that no matter how physically alone patients may be, few of them die alone.

End of life is more than a medical endeavor. Dying is more than the physical manifestations we observe.

When medicine can no longer defy illness, nature assumes its rightful place, and dying becomes what it has always been: a human experience.

It is more than the closing of a life. It is a meaningful vantage point that draws people inward.

Toward the end of life, people often recall the best parts of living. For some, this happens consciously through conversation. For others, it comes unconsciously through dreams.

The dying process involves progressively deeper sleep and alternating levels of alertness. These states are not necessarily moments of confusion or delirium.

In our studies, dying patients described them as comforting, subjective experiences that brought clarity, insight, and a peaceful end of life.

These experiences include vivid dreams.

The first video is of our patient Genie, who had pre-death experiences that were comforting, vivid, and deeply real to her.

Her experiences didn’t deny death. They reaffirmed the life she had lived, and they lessened her fear of dying.

When I walked in one morning, she said, “I had the most amazing dream.”

I said, “Tell me about it.”

Genie: It was so detailed and so real that I felt like it was actually happening.

I was lying in bed, and people were walking very slowly past me on the right-hand side. Some of them I didn’t know, but they were all very friendly. They touched my arm or my hand as they went by.

I felt good. I felt good seeing some of the people, and the others didn’t bother me either.

I’ve seen my mother recently. I can’t say that my mother and I got along all those years, but we made up for it at the end.

She would say to me, “I’m not crazy, Jewel.”

And I’d say, “I don’t think you are. It’s okay.”

When I told my family that I was happy about it, they asked, “How does it make you feel?”

Well, I feel good about it.

Physician: The comfort and peace these experiences brought her gave her exactly what she needed to pass on.

For me, it affirmed that you’re not alone when you die.

At the end of life, people rarely share existential insights or exuberant pronouncements. They don’t have grand epiphanies.

Instead, they talk about love in a way that restores their sense of connection and of being made whole.

Elderly patients experience the return of the mother or father they lost in childhood. Women cradle babies long lost to their touch.

They visualize a world where their most meaningful relationships define their purpose and their true accomplishments.

The following video is of our 13-year-old patient, Jessica.

Children often lack language for death and may never have known someone who has died.

Jessica dreamed about a pet who had passed away. His return meant that she was not alone and that she was loved.

Jessica: The dreams I have are good dreams now. I dream about my old dog, Shadow, who passed away.

I see him, and he’s in a good place. He’s running and having fun.

But then he runs away, and I never see him again. I feel like that’s his way of saying goodbye.

Occasionally, he comes to see me. I have a feeling it’s his way of saying, “It’s okay. I’m in a safe place. I’m in heaven.”

I usually just try to lie there in bed, recreate that dream, and think about what just happened before I woke up.

But I do get afraid because I see how dark my room is. One night, I looked on the ground and happened to see this long, black shape.

And that was him, beside my bed.

I feel like the meaning is love. That they’re there, and they’re always going to protect you.

Physician: As a doctor, I don’t need to explain these end-of-life experiences to my patients or interfere with them medically.

I’ve learned to show reverence for the strength of the human spirit and its endless quest to heal what has been harmed or broken.

While we may envision ventilators and IVs, dying people often experience the love, presence, and even touch of loved ones who died before them.

They revisit memories of being held and cherished.

It becomes the culmination of a life rather than its demise.

The dying teach us that the best parts of having lived are never truly lost.

The lesson seems clear: the totality of our human experience can never be defined or reduced by its final moments.

Often, the richness of life and our relationships is found in simple, symbolic gestures.

Sometimes, it’s just about the sauce.

Patrick’s Partner: Patrick didn’t cook, with one exception: he made his grandmother’s sauce.

He made it about every four, six, or eight weeks throughout the entire 16 years I knew him.

Patrick was the only member of his family who knew how to make the sauce. And for all the years I knew him, he insisted that something was missing.

Fast-forward to the Sunday before he died.

He woke up in the morning, and I couldn’t get him to eat. He wasn’t hungry. He had completely lost his appetite.

I said, “Baby, we’ve got to make you something for breakfast. What do you want?”

He said, “I’m full.”

And I said, “Nice, Pat. You had a Snack Pack pudding yesterday. You’re not full.”

He said, “Oh, no. I cooked with Nana Dolores last night.”

As real as I’m sitting here, he believed he had made the sauce with his grandmother the night before.

He said he could smell it. He could still taste it. He was full from it.

And after all those years, she had finally shown him what he had been doing wrong.

The very last step, before taking the sauce off the burner, was adding a teaspoon of sugar.

We spent the next seven and a half hours, because that’s how long it takes, making his grandmother’s sauce.

We made the sauce.

And he added the sugar.

Physician: If your final dream in life is about spaghetti sauce, I don’t think there’s anything more peaceful than that.