upworthy

end of life

Health

Hospice nurse shares one comforting sign that someone is going to die within 4 weeks

'Visioning' is often a great comfort to people who may be scared of death.

via Canva Photos

A nurse explains how 'visioning' 3-4 weeks before death works.

Death is the final mystery that we all must face and it’s natural to be scared about going through the process. Experts say a few things can help, including using our fear to live a purposeful life and even making jokes, or using 'gallows humor'. One bit of good news is that we tend to get a little bit less afraid of death as we age. But in general, it helps to not shy away from death completely. Learning and talking about it is actually a good thing.

A new video by a hospice nurse shows an excellent reason for people to feel comfortable facing the unknown. Julie McFadden posts videos helping to demystify the dying process and bring comfort to people with a loved one in hospice care, or who may be dying themselves. Her profile reads, "Helping understand death to live better and die better." McFadden is also the author of the bestselling book, “Nothing to Fear.”

Hospice Nurse Julie has earned over half a million subscribers and has witnessed over a hundred deaths. In a recent video, she reveals that people are often comforted by friends and relatives who have passed away in their final days.

She says that when people begin experiencing these visions, it’s a sign that they will be passing away within a few weeks.

"Here's one sign that someone is close to death that most people don't believe happens,” Julie begins the video.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

"Usually a few weeks to a month before someone dies, if they're on hospice, they will start seeing dead loved ones, dead relatives, dead pets. This happens so often that we actually put it in our educational packets that we give to patients and their families when they come on hospice so they aren't surprised or scared when it happens,” she continues.

The experience is called visioning; although no one knows how or why it happens, it’s common among all her patients.

"We don't know why it happens, but we see it in definitely more than half of our patients," she continues.

People often believe that the visions are caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. However, Julie says that isn’t true. “Because when it does happen, most people are alert and oriented and are at least a month from death, so they don't have low oxygen," she said.

The good news is that the visioning experience is almost always comforting for those who are nearing the end.


death, dying, hospice, fear of dying, hospice nurse, mortality, aging, seniors, spirituality, visions Dying patients may be visited 3-4 weeks before death by loved ones, deceased spouses, or even dead pets. Photo by Anirudh on Unsplash

It often involves relatives who 'come from the other side' to let them know everything will be okay and encourage them to let go and pass away. People also experience being taken on journeys with loved ones or having sensory experiences from the past, such as smelling their grandmother's perfume or father’s cigar.

These visitors can also appear several at a time. Patients might report the room feeling 'crowded' like they are being joined by many people at once. It's possible they may be visited by 'spirits' or people they don't know, though that's less common.

Christopher Kerr, a CEO of Hospice & Palliative Care, an organization that provides palliative care in Buffalo, New York, says that the relatives that often appear in these visions are people who protected and comforted the dying parent when they were alive. So, they may see a parent who nurtured them but not one they feared.

Kerr has extensively studied the mysterious phenomena that happen when people die but has no real explanation for why the visioning experience happens. “I have witnessed cases where what I was seeing was so profound, and the meaning for the patient was so clear and precise, that I almost felt like an intruder,” he told BBC Brazil. “And trying to decipher the etiology, the cause, seemed futile. I concluded that it was simply important to have reverence, that the fact that I could not explain the origin and process did not invalidate the experience for the patient.”

In a more in-depth video, Hospice Nurse Julie shares a real video of a dying woman experience visioning. It's extremely powerful:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Again, experts agree that once your loved one begins experiencing these visions, it's likely that they will pass on in the next 3-4 weeks. Remember that they are not a symptom to be treated or a concern to be addressed, as long as they aren't causing distress. They are simply a comforting sign of things to come.

It's comforting to know that for many, the final days of life may not be filled with pain and fear but instead with a sense of peace and joy. While we may never fully understand the reasons behind these mysterious visions, if they bring calm during such a daunting time, we can simply be grateful for their presence. They’re kind of like life, in general. In the end, we may not really know what it was all about, but we can be happy that it happened.

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

From Your Site Articles
hospice
HealthPublic Health
More

Gord Downie is dying. All of Canada came out to say goodbye.

Confronting death with music, determination, and grace, too.

It’s hard to think of a band that embodies Canada more than The Tragically Hip.

They write about our small towns, about our strange little histories, about love and politics and nature and culture and everything in between. There are even two guys named Gordon — anecdotally agreed to be the most Canadian name — in the band.

They’ve played together for 33 years, released 16 albums, won more than a dozen awards and sold out stadiums in Canada year after year after year.

Outside of their home country, most people don’t know they exist.

The Tragically Hip, or as you might know them "Who?" Image via George Pimentel/Canada for Haiti via Getty Images.

There’s a popular theory that at least part of the reason for this is that whenever The Hip played shows in America, expat Canadians would buy up all the tickets. Maybe that’s true. Canadians share a lot of stuff with our southern neighbors — some of it we’re intermittently sorry about — but The Hip is ours.

So when Gord Downie — The Tragically Hip’s lead singer and Canada’s unofficial poet laureate — was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, Canadians were crushed.

But Downie knew exactly what he wanted to do with the time he had left.

For four weeks, he and his band toured across Canada. They played 15 shows, one every two days, traveling across the country from British Columbia to their hometown of Kingston, Ontario. It’s a place where, as Downie joked during the concert, they played their first three shows ever for audiences of 14, 28, and six people, respectively.

On Aug. 20, 2016, The Hip played their final show live for a stadium audience of 6,700 people — including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Image via Arthur Mola/Invision/AP.

Thousands filled the Kingston Town Square and other public viewing places across the country. Around laptops and TVs, Canadians gathered together to watch our national band play one last show — decades before we expected they ever would.

To give you a sense of how important this band is to Canada: An estimated 11.7 million people watched the concert on TV or via web live-stream. That's one-third of Canada's population.

So if you only know three people from Canada, one of them was watching The Tragically Hip on Aug. 20 — and the other two probably spent the next few days fielding questions about why they weren't.

Fans in Halifax, Canada, watch The Tragically Hip's final concert in a public square. Image via Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press via AP.

The Tragically Hip's final show was nearly three hours long. They did three encores, something Downie acknowledged as a first for the band. "We’re in uncharted waters," he quipped, taking the stage for the fourth and final time. They played "Ahead by a Century," one of their most famous songs, one last time. Downie thanked Canada, then left the stage. Maybe forever.

As much as this concert was about the music, it was also about saying goodbye and the grief that comes with it.

In a year where music fans have said goodbye to the once-in-a-generation talents of David Bowie and Prince, it's hard to comprehend the loss of yet another important musician.

Like Gord Downie, David Bowie knew his end was coming. Bowie chose to die in private. His final album, "Blackstar," is a thoughtful goodbye albeit one that arrived only days before he passed. By the time fans started to comprehend its meaning, he was already gone.

Downie is doing the opposite, dying in full view of the millions of fans who love him. We are grieving this loss in real time, together, with all the rawness that comes with it.

How you choose to end your life — should you get that chance — is deeply personal.

Canada cannot keep Gord Downie forever. No matter how hard crowds clap for one more encore, the band cannot always play on.

But we can gather and sing and celebrate music that’s become part of our national story, and we can thank the man who made it and honor the contribution he and his music have made to the soundtrack of our lives.

So on that Saturday night, that’s what we did. Thank you, Gord, for everything.

More
Trending Stories