I am a physician.  Today, I saw an 83-year-old woman in my office, let us call her Judy.  She and her sister Teri (89) live together, and have been together for many decades.  Teri was told, recently that after years of fighting, she is dying of cancer.  Teri has been more forgetful and Judy must care for her day and night.  The stress was almost more than she  (Judy) could bear.

Judy said to me very tearful that the chemotherapy for her sister has stopped, that she refuses to exercise or fight any more.  The two of them escaped the Nazis in the 1930s, and went on to become among the most famous performers in their fields.  And now, after being together all these years, this is how it ends?  "It is so...unfair!", she said to me, in tears, but also with some anger.  "All that we shared, lived, everything for nothing in the end."

I gently tried to suggest that a spiritual outlook may change the way dying appears to both her and her sister.  They had the same religious background that I did (Jewish) without much thought or idea of an afterlife.  (In some ways, I think this is a deliberate part of Judaism, to let the people concentrate more on being a good person in the here and now, with less of an eye on the hereafter).  For many around the world, death is final - oblivion.  We spoke more.  A little bit about NDEs, and spirituality.  Finally, Judy related to me that before her mother passed on, she reported visits with her deceased husband.  Her mother said one day that she was told by him that it was time, and passed that very day.  She related one or two other unexplainable encounters in the family with those who had passed.  But in her real-life situation, she did not believe in an afterlife or spirit existing without a body.  

Still, I think I got through to her to some extent.  It was sad all the same.  I recalled how Elizabeth Kubler-Ross had become somewhat of a mystic in her later years, and told the parents of children with deadly cancers that when they passed, they would sever the silver cords of their spirits and float upward through a tunnel into a light of love.  There to be met by their loved ones.  Dr. Kubler-Ross had become absolutely certain of this.  I wish, through some great experience or epiphany I too may be able to give my patients this solace through personal knowledge beyond doubt.


Matthew

Matthew,

My main concern about Judaism is its otherwise commendable stress on living life to the full in the now.  As a minister, I often visited seriously or terminally ill people.  There comes a time when living in the now rings hollow.   But I think you handled the situation as well as possible.   You got her sharing experiences that are at least suggestive of an afterlife and she will no doubt mull over her conversation with you.   Getting people to share such esperiences is more helpful than enticing a profession of faith from them because, under great crisis, we'll tell ourselves almost anything without real conviction.   There is a good chance that simple meditation on her family's paranormal experiences will create a comforting sense of wonder in her that is more powerful than mere assent to beliefs that may in fact ring hollow.

One of the most exciting findings of the Osis-Haraldsson study of Indian and american NDEs is this.  The study explored cases in which a deceased relative appeared in a vision to either assure the patient that he would survive his illness or to call him home.  The study found that the message of this dead relative was a greater predictor of outcome than the medical prognosis!

Don  

This wasn't your question! but how do you get to be 83 years old before you ask these questions? It must have been pretty obvious that life isn't fair (nor are people) whe the Nazis came to town.

Anyway, why do you think ...or how do you think...Kubler-Ross developed her mystical view? It couldn't have been just one event, had to be many small ones, though once she asked the important questions and then met that cleaning lady in the hospital who told her death wasn't anything to be afraid of (the one whose child died in her arms in the ER waiting for hours to see the staff). Does her book hinge it on one thing? I heard her talk once; she was totally charismatic and had her audience in her hands (this was in the town where the Mayo Clinic is, where I once worked in a research lab...very strange town). Most dramatic story was a visit from a former patient who had passed over; the person showed up on an elevator ride. That would be pretty convincing! But the compelling reason for the visit was concern for a child left behind here. It sounded like Kubler-Ross "got down" with alot of dying people, Matthew, and that was at a time more repressed than now. Don't know what you do (specialty) but how many docs around now do a deathbed vigil? Are you willing to sit and wait and listen and watch? Are the best passing over stories coming from other docs or from support staff and family? I remember my great-grandmother talking about the doc who couldn't do anything to treat her child's scarlet fever, but he was there with them, sitting, until the child died, and that made my great-gran feel cared for. But what doc sits now? But anyway, I think maybe that helped Kubler-Ross have those transforming experiences. (Not saying you don't do that now, just that it still isn't the norm.) Maybe it isn't feasible; the family might feel weird.