What End-of-Life Dreams Can Teach Us About Living, with Hospice Doctor Christopher Kerr

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:00)
You have witnessed thousands of people take their last breath. What are some of the end-of-life experiences or dream experiences that your dying patients have told you about?

**Christopher Kerr** (0:09)
The most common thing they would dream about is seeing their deceased loved ones. They say, this was a happy... Sometimes you actually get offended when you imply that it was a dream.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:17)
Because it was a visitation for them.

**Christopher Kerr** (0:19)
Yeah, it was very real for them. It was very, very real. And they're not dreamlike, and it wasn't just anybody. It was those that loved and secured the most. There's almost this form of final justice. Somebody with held love.
One parent, they were excluded. But the one who nurtured and loved and secured was included. Maybe one sibling and not two.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:39)
The people show up who loved you the most.

**Christopher Kerr** (0:41)
Yes, and had a pivotal role in the formation of who you were.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:45)
Wow.

**Christopher Kerr** (0:46)
And in that sense, in the end, you're almost put back together by being brought back to family.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:53)
Hi, and welcome to The Oprah Podcast. We heard about a phenomenon called end of life dreams, which is when people are near their last days of life. They often have visions or visitations in their dreams.
And those of you who've experienced this, you've had the blessed sacredness of being with somebody as they're passing, maybe you have experienced this with a loved one or will in the future. Dr. Chris Kerr is a neurobiologist, and the Chief Medical Officer at Hospice and Palliative Care, Buffalo. And his TEDx talk has 5.5 million views already, and he's written a book called, Death Is But a Dream, Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End. So what do you mean by that, Death Is But a Dream?

**Christopher Kerr** (1:44)
That there's a death that we see and we know, the physical, the objective, the physical lessening and the suffering, but then there's a subjective aspect of it. There's this inner world of dying, there's the patient perspective. And the closest nomenclature we have for that is a dream-like state.

**Oprah Winfrey** (2:03)
Is a dream-like state. It's not a dream, it's just a dream-like state.

**Christopher Kerr** (2:07)
Yeah. When we actually asked patients in survey, about half of them said they were actually awake when these were happening, and we actually asked them to measure on realism, it was 10 out of 10 closest to being real.

**Oprah Winfrey** (2:19)
These so-called deathbed dreams are now being more fully understood as end-of-life experiences. Neurobiologist Dr. Chris Kerr is the leading expert on this mysterious phenomenon. He and his research team have conducted more than 1,500 interviews with fully lucid patients nearing the end of their life, and many of these patients describe vivid encounters with deceased loved ones.

**Gene** (2:45)
We were laughing, we were talking, we were eating. It was like a regular Sunday day and night.

**Oprah Winfrey** (2:51)
They report that these visitations don't feel like dreams at all, but as deeply real experiences that can bring comfort, peace and closure for the dying and also those they leave behind.
You have witnessed thousands of people actually take their last breath. Can you just share for us for a moment what that is like and it never gets old, I'm sure.

**Christopher Kerr** (3:16)
No, it's more anticlimactic than climatic.
Dying is a state of progressive sleep, of letting go. It's very hard to die. In fact, if you're not physically comfortable as well as psychologically at peace and so people get deeper in sleep and death happens in that state. You usually see it coming and there just usually isn't a next breath.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:40)
So it's very hard to die if you're not physically comfortable and not psychologically also ready.

**Christopher Kerr** (3:47)
So people don't die in a wake state, they die in the depths of sleep and you can't get there unless you're comfortable.
Everybody seems to have an understanding of that from a physical perspective. But psychologically, existentially, you also have to find peace.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:01)
Here's what you write on page 13 I appreciated this. End of life experiences testify to our greatest needs, to love and be loved, to be nurtured and feel connected, to be remembered and forgiven.
They provide continuity between and across lives. Based on the content of these dreams, it's obvious that the forgiveness and love that count the most come from family. You've seen this over and over and over and over. What are some of the end of life experiences or dream experiences that your dying patients have told you about? What impact do they have on them and also on their family members?