The Dead Are Not Gone: What the Dying See Before They Pass
I have watched people die. And many of them were not alone.
For years, I worked in hospital care, as a healthcare assistant, a senior clinical support worker and a trainee nursing associate, at King's College Hospital and Guy's Cancer Centre in London, and at the Royal Preston Hospital. I cared for patients in their final days. And again and again, I saw the same thing.
Dying patients spoke to their loved ones who had already died. Mothers. Fathers. Husbands. Wives. They saw what the people around them could not see. And then, calmly, they passed.
One patient I cared for loved listening to music. Near the end, she murmured that she wanted to hear some music. I remembered that I had played Frank Sinatra for her in the past, so I asked if she would like to listen to him again. She nodded, and asked for Fly Me to the Moon. While she was listening, she was all smiles. The next day, she passed.
I have never forgotten her. And I have never stopped asking what she, and so many others, were seeing.
I am not the only one who has seen these things
A century ago, the Dublin physicist Sir William Barrett began collecting the visions of the dying. His book Death-Bed Visions was published in 1926. It began with a case his own wife witnessed. She was an obstetric surgeon, and she sat with a young mother who was dying after childbirth. The woman said she could see her late father coming for her. Then, puzzled, she said that her sister Vida was with him.
No one had told her that Vida had died a short time before.
Researchers call these Peak in Darien cases. They are rare, but they are among the hardest of all to explain away.
Since then, studies across very different cultures have found the same pattern. In the 1970s, researchers surveyed hundreds of doctors and nurses in America and India. In both countries, the dying saw visitors who came to take them away. In Japan, families have a word for it: omukae, the coming to meet. In an American hospice study in Buffalo, nearly nine in ten dying patients reported dreams or visions near the end, and most found them comforting.
Is it simply the dying brain?
These are fair questions, and they deserve honest answers. A brain under stress can create powerful images, and some drugs can cause hallucinations. But those explanations do not fit everything. Drug hallucinations are often confused and frightening. These visions are usually clear and calm. They come to people who are not heavily sedated. And they come, again and again, in the form of the dead.
Some things are harder still to explain. People with severe dementia, who have not recognised their own families for years, can suddenly become clear. They know their loved ones, speak to them, and say goodbye. Then, soon after, they die. Doctors call it terminal lucidity, and science still cannot fully explain it.
As old as humanity itself
None of this is new. Ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Tibet and the Mandaeans all described the soul being guided on its journey after death. On the night before he died, Yeshua told his disciples: "In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you. I will come again, and receive you unto myself."
In 1945, near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, a farmer dug up a sealed jar full of lost books. These, and other ancient writings recovered in Egypt, such as the Gospel of Mary, describe the soul's journey after death in astonishing detail. In their own language, the ancient writers described what I saw on the wards. The soul is not alone. It is met. It is called. It is taken home.
What I believe
I cannot prove what lies beyond death. No honest person can. But I believe the dead are not gone. I believe love is stronger than death. And I believe that when our time comes, those who loved us will be there to meet us.
I have written all of this, the testimony of nurses and doctors, the research, and the wisdom of the ancient world, into my new book.
The Dead Are Not Gone: They Come to Take Us Home
Deathbed Visions, Lost Gospels and the Soul's Journey
Available now on Amazon, in paperback and Kindle:
https://amzn.eu/d/04jFdq6E
If you have ever seen a loved one speak to someone who had already passed, I would be honoured to hear your story.
Dominic C Ndulue
Founder and First Luminary of The Monadites
ObeleChukwu Press
The Monadites: https://themonadites.netlify.app