Christopher Kerr and Carine Mardorossian. Death is But a Dream. Avery, 2020.

Most readers can see in the title of Death is But a Dream a play on the chorus of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” There also might be an echo of the famous line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which is alluded to in this book:

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Over the years I have read various books about near death experiences and other works on death and dying. Death is But a Dream is different. Dr. Kerr has worked for many years as physician in a hospice. He job is ministering to the dying. Over the years he has seen a pattern in the experiences of many of his terminal patients. Many have what he calls lucid dreams or visions as they approach death.

The author does not honestly know what to make of many of these experiences. He does not try. He describes them and to a great degree leaves the interpretation to the reader. He notes that about four fifths of these experiences are positive and bring some kind of closure to the individual. He notes that in many cases the patients insist that they were not dreaming—they often use the term vision. Early in the book we see the word vision or visions in quotation marks, as if to say “the so-called visions.” By the end of the book, the punctuation marks are dropped.

Most of the book tells stories. They are moving stories from many of his hospice patients. Kerr quotes another doctor who says:

“Today healing is replaced with treating, caring is supplanted by managing, and the art of listening is taken over by technological procedures.” (22)

There is always a temptation to make medical science more mechanistic or materialistic. This concern goes back to Hippocrates and is echoed in Chaucer’s corrupt physician in The Canterbury Tales and in the persona of The Scarlet Letter‘s Roger Chillingworth. It is clear that the author struggles with this, too, but he has seen and shared enough to make it clear there is more to life than meets the eye.

These are not near death experiences (NDE) like that of Dr. Eben Alexander, but what the book calls pre-death experiences. Still, one cannot help think of Alexander’s experience, too. Both doctors came to recognize what many physicians are reluctant to admit—that the mind is not the same as the brain.

Alexander’s description as well as his medical condition during his NDE make it clear that what happened to him was something external, something apart from his own mind and body. Kerr is ambiguous. He speaks of the way the mind works as though these experiences are all internal and subjective. At the same time, he recognizes that many of these experiences sound as if someone—whether human, divine, or angelic—appeared from the outside. In some cases the patient sees people that no one else in the room can see.

The stories Kerr tells are quite moving. The bulk of the book contains these stories, and they will keep the reader reading. Many involve a departed friend or relative appearing and telling them that they will be all right. Many involve resolving or reconciling a conflict or problem that seriously affected their lives.

One of the most significant stories in that regard involved a man in his later forties who had been a drug addict since his teens. His mother had been one and still was one. He had a daughter in her twenties whom he had tender feelings for but whom he had neglected. Through some of his dreams/visions he spoke about his daughter. The hospice was able to locate her, and she was eager to see him. In the last few months of the man’s life, they were not only able to reconcile but to develop mutual respect.

We begin to see a pattern, and even the exceptions seem to prove the pattern. One woman had lucid dreams of flying. Later in her life she had come to believe in God and said that even if you had the faith the size of a mustard seed, you could fly (see Matthew 17:20). She also admitted that she did not know how to love. Gradually, they learned that she had an abusive father and a helpless mother, became a ward of the state in foster care at an early age, and as an adult was involved in abusive relationships. In effect for her, then, there was no “loved one” other than God.

The chapter on pre-death experiences of children also demonstrated something similar. One thirteen year old girl with terminal cancer saw a pet dog that had died a few years earlier, and for her it had been a member of the family all her life. She later had a conversation with her mother’s best friend who had died at the age of thirty-five when the girl was eight. They were probably the only deaths she had personally known in her short life.

Not only do these pre-death experiences prepare the patient for dying, but, as we saw with the drug addict and his daughter, they also provide healing. Some war veterans, for example, were taken back to traumatic battle experiences to find healing as they saw them from a different perspective. This reminded me of primal integration or inner healing therapies that can effectively bring psychological healing. The difference is that there is no psychiatrist or counselor leading the patient, simply the patient’s own experience and, perhaps, the hand of God.

I give the author credit for sharing the experiences largely without commentary. Many works on the subject of dying will bring in a particular interpretation, and because of the subject matter, some of those interpretations are weirder than the experiences they describe. Death is But a Dream is not like that at all. It tells the story and leaves the interpretation, if any, up to the reader.

Death is But a Dream can bring understanding an maybe some healing to those of us who are not medical professionals or who do not counsel the dying. I wish I could have read this book or something like it ten years ago. (But no, I do not think there is anything like it, certainly not for the layperson.)

My father passed away nine years ago. The last week of his life he was in hospice. The last time I saw him alive, he was telling me how he had been talking with one of his old friends. I assumed he was hallucinating because of medications. I was upset. My father had been a strong-willed, self-controlled person, and I did not want to see him not in his right mind.

I see now that maybe he was weak but still sharing a genuine experience. This meeting with his old friend, whether it was real or imagined, whether it was from an internal or external source, I suspect may have ministered some mental or spiritual healing to Dad.

So the book ministered to me, to let me know that my father was probably not out of his mind, but really preparing or being prepared for his death. Now I know. I think I can understand his story better and even achieve some closure myself.

I realize that the Bible warns against necromancy, (see Deuteronomy 18:10-11) something the polytheists of Bible times were notorious for. (Read The Aeneid, for example.) But that is specifically seeking and consulting the dead. None of the stories indicate that any of the patients were looking for dead people (or angels or pets) but that they just appeared, whether from their own imaginations or from outside.

Although I have read other books from time to time on the subject of dying and near-death experiences like Dr. Alexander’s, I never read or even heard about a study like this. This is different. Certainly I recommend it to medical professionals of all kinds to remind them of the humanity of even their most degraded patients. But I recommend it to anyone, as I would to Dr. Alexander’s book, to let us know that

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

If word gets out, this could be a bestseller.