Insights of palliative care | opinion

I was 26 before I experienced the loss of a close family member. The death of my grandfather was the first time I was forced to think of death in anything other than an abstract sense. No longer was it something 'out there', but it became something that touched directly upon my life. Since that time, I have lost others close to me. I've sat with people during their final days. I've also had the privilege of presiding over around 300 funerals.

In light of these experiences, the questions they have raised and the lessons I have learnt, I found a recent article on the ABC fascinating. In it, three long-time palliative care nurses spoke about their observations. In particular, two things from their reflections grabbed me.

First, according to all three nurses, it is common for people to report seeing long-dead loved ones in the room.

Anne-Marie Jackson, a palliative care nurse of 26 years, explains, "I've seen so many deaths, and not one has been the same... But you know, when death is imminent, some things, there's some things that happen... People will see their dead relatives in the room... And, you know, families will go and tell them that they're not seeing them. And I'm like, well, they actually probably are seeing them because it happens quite a lot."

The scepticism, natural to me as a Westerner, kicks in a bit at this point. Perhaps, as the article muses, the person is simply hallucinating. However, if lots of people over many years all hallucinate the same thing, perhaps the more likely explanation is that this is something genuinely supernatural rather than the trick of a delirious, expiring mind.

It's not just the dying who report these Spiritual experiences. I know people who tell me about similar events. Perfectly sane people who previously had no time for claims of spiritual experiences until they personally had them.

It strikes me that these stories point to there being more to life and death than what we see. Might it be that the deeper reality of what is going on in the moment of death is invisible to us because, unlike the person on the verge of their last breath, we are not the ones going through that moment?

This brings me to the second observation which struck me in this article. That "people don't get the opportunity to change. It's too late. They're already wired the way they are."

In my experience, not only is this true of people's character. It is also true of what they place their hope in after death. Those who believe there is nothing afterwards, even when sad or fearful of the moment as it arrives, do not suddenly change their belief. Those who have put the question out of their minds are rarely in the mood to begin thinking about it during their final days.

Yet what if these nurses' supernatural experiences point to a continuing existence beyond our final breath? Surely, it makes sense to think hard about what that might mean now! And indeed, it would be foolish to ignore the question, especially if there are answers out there.

As I have thought more deeply about the reality of death, I am convinced that the Easter Story holds the key to making sense of it. After all, if Jesus truly died and rose to new life, then he's the only man to experience death and live to tell the story! And if his promise of eternal life to those who trust in him after our time in this world is trustworthy, then listening to what he tells us about the end of life is the most important thing we can do!