They look through you.” She further described it as a peaceful, serene, and beautiful atmosphere. One caregiver explained that the dying are often somewhere else for a short while and then they come back. They are comforting experiences that seem to help them let go of the physical world. The latter are irritating and annoying and often involve very weird visions, such as insects crawling on the wall or devils dancing, but the true ELE occur mostly when the person is fully aware. Koedam says that the difference between a genuine “end-of-life experience” (ELE) and a drug-induced hallucination is fairly obvious. “They talk about going on a journey, suddenly stare at a particular point in the room or turn toward the window and express feelings of surprise, joy, or wonder.” “Those people who are nearing the end find it easy to transit to and from other realities and describe other worlds,” she continues. Relatives often shy away from discussing such things for fear of ridicule. Also, some of the hospice staff avoid talking about them as they do not want to appear unprofessional. “They say that these individuals have come to collect them, or to help them to let go of life,” she explains, pointing out that many people are reluctant to talk about such experiences because they are afraid of being seen as confused and then required to take medication they don’t want. It is not uncommon, Koedam states, for dying people, in the days or weeks before death, to talk about visits from deceased loved ones. She forewarns the reader that her book does not offer scientific statistics, “but real experiences and observations of hospice staff who work on the boundary between life and death.” That prompted her to carry out a small-scale study into deathbed phenomena in the Netherlands between 20, one in which she interviewed a number of hospice caregivers. In the book’s Introduction, she states that she attended a symposium dealing with near-death experiences in 2009, the key speakers being Doctors Pim van Lommel and Peter Fenwick, two world-renowned authorities in the field. Koedam (below) served on the staff and as a volunteer at hospice De Vier Vogels in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and at other hospices in that country. Perhaps hospice policies vary from one country to another, or possibly from state to state or individually within that country or state. Prior to that training, I had attended a lecture in another state by an experienced hospice worker in which she talked all about the need for hospice residents to “live in the present.” The speaker had absolutely nothing to say about the possibility that consciousness will survive death and that the dying person’s doom and gloom might be better dealt with by discussing such survival. While attending a weekend of hospice training, I was informed that spiritual matters were not to be discussed with residents unless they brought it up and then it was something that should be referred to the hospice chaplain. As indicated by a couple of prior posts, the last one being on Janu( Do hospices promote despair?), I had come to the conclusion, admittedly based on very limited sampling, that hospices discourage any discussion of spiritual matters, especially the whole idea of life after death. After reading Ineke Koedam’s recently-released book, In the Light of Death, I am rethinking my somewhat negative ideas about hospices.
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