Death Is But a Dream

December 1, 2019
A hospice doctor with an "aversion to the supernatural" examines the experiences of patients' end-of-life dreams and visions and proposes that they have profound meaning and impact. Intrigued by his patients' nearly ubiquitous reports of healing, restorative, and closure-providing visions in the days and hours before death, Kerr, the chief medical officer for the Center for Hospice & Palliative Care in Buffalo, embarked on a long-term study of these experiences, and he recounts many of them in this sympathetic and intriguing book. Readers looking for evidence of an afterlife, an eternal soul, or insight into what happens to us after death will not find it here. Instead, as the author takes pains to illustrate, it is what transpires just before death that proves to be profound and meaningful for patients and their loved ones. "These experiences simply give each patient what they need the most," Kerr writes about the dreams that are more vivid and real than any that have come before and usually boil down to feelings of genuine love: the love of a deceased dog acting as a guide into death for a dying child; the sight of a mother's arms reaching out from above an elderly woman's bed; dreams that allow a widow to relive quiet, happy moments doing crosswords with her deceased spouse. Even distressing dreams serve to work out and heal old wounds and bring peace in the final hours. While Kerr's exclusive focus on patients' words and experiences--rather than those of caregivers or researchers with their occasionally detached perspectives and potential agendas--is admirable, the presentation of one case study after another, with each patient's introduction, backstory, and experiences, becomes a little tedious, and some amount of contextualizing data or further description of research findings would have been welcome. (Readers can find some of this information in the author's TEDx talk along with video footage of selected patients; watching makes a nice companion to the book.) An uplifting and reassuring work testifying to the deep restorative and spiritual--though not necessarily religious--nature of pre-death visions.

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Starred review from December 23, 2019
Kerr, neurobiologist and chief medical officer at Hospice Buffalo, draws on his case studies on end-of-life dreams and visions in this penetrating and empathetic debut. After a veteran hospice nurse predicted a patient’s death and humbled then–cardiology fellow Kerr, he changed his career trajectory and approach to caring for dying patients. Kerr begins with his epiphany and backstory about how witnessing his father’s death and a priest’s callous dismissal of his father’s pre-death vision pushed him toward medicine, then explains his hospice patients’ pre-death dreams, visions, and life stories. Among Kerr’s patients are no-nonsense Bobbie, who tests her doctors with sly and cunning humor; 95-year-old Frank, who enjoys speaking with his verbose late uncle while asleep, but often wants him to “shut up”; the imperfect, traumatized former police detective whose frightening dreams worked out his guilt and sins before he peacefully joined his late wife; and Jessica, a child dying of cancer whose mother’s deceased best friend, along with Jessica’s late black lab mix, visited and consoled her in her dreams. This comforting guide will reassure the dying and their loved ones while providing instructive portraits of end-of-life patients for those who work in medical and healing professions.

January 1, 2020

Kerr (CEO & chief medical officer at Hospice Buffalo) reveals the sense of calm and peacefulness that end-of-life dreams and visions bring to the dying. Following up on his 2014 article in an issue of the Journal of Palliative Medicine, Kerr interviewed the dying themselves, asking them how they perceived their own dreams and visions. This book also follows a 2015 TEDx Talk and a 2016 documentary on this same topic. Kerr highlights only a small handful of the more than 1,200 patients he has interviewed over the course of a decade, but these few vignettes reveal the themes prevalent in pre-death dreams. In each story, readers see both patients and their families find peace in the transition from life to death. Kerr broadly describes the end-of-life dream and visions by those unable to give consent, whether owing to dementia or reduced mental capacity. Their dreams, although different in scope, still highlight many of the same themes prevalent in others, and in the end, also helped lead to a peaceful death. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in end-of-life care and comfort for those dying and their bereaved families, without an emphasis on religion or metaphysics.--Rachel M. Minkin, Michigan State Univ. Libs., East Lansing

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