Visions or Delusions or the Brain Shutting Down: Deathbead Encounters

My great-grandmother-in-law's last words were, "Mama! Mama!" Did she see a vision of her mother, gone for more than sixty years, welcoming her to heaven? Or was she imagining herself a small child, calling out for her mother for comfort? The Washington Post has an article by Caitlin Gibson called The profound meaning and mystery of deathbed visions, about end-of-life dreams and visions, or ELDVs. William Kerr, the doctor studying this phenomena after years of medical professionals dismissing them as delusions, said they describe people and places they saw in dreams and visions, which might occur in different states of consciousness — wide awake, half awake or completely asleep — but conveyed the same striking intensity, an undeniable sense of realness. They were nothing like “normal” dreams, these patients insisted; their experiences felt wholly immersive, coherent and meaningful. Kerr noted that these descriptions stood in sharp contrast to the more discordant, often distressing experiences of delirium or medication-induced hallucinations, which also commonly occur in dying patients....The vast majority of ELDVs are comforting, but some can be unsettling or disturbing. Some patients find themselves revisiting pivotal episodes of their lives, while others experience more mundane, familiar moments. Travel is a frequently recurring theme: Many people describe packing suitcases, preparing for a trip or seeing loved ones in train or bus stations. ELDVs might occur very soon before a death — within hours or days — but can sometimes take place weeks or even a few months beforehand, often corresponding to a patient’s fluctuating health and typically increasing in frequency as death grows nearer.... [His] study, published in 2014 in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, found that end-of-life dreams and visions were strikingly common: 88 percent of patients reported experiencing at least one.