In the winter of 2010, 90-year-old Helen Budzinski described what she saw, which no one else could see.
A blond girl, age 5 or so, at the foot of her bed. Then twin girls. Then a pair of boys named Michael and David.
Helen’s stroke in October sharpened what had been a slow decline. Her granddaughter, Jocelyn Pappas, whom she raised, now served as Helen’s full-time caregiver at Jocelyn’s home in rural Connecticut.
On Monday morning, Dec. 20, with darkness shrouding the woods outside the window, Jocelyn placed a hand on the back of her grandmother’s blue floral nightgown and eased her upright.
“Oh, you work so hard for me, Jocelyn,” Helen said.
“I only work hard for you, Nana.”
“You only have to work five more days,” she said. “I got my ticket.”
“What do you mean, your ticket?”
Helen said she would be leaving this world at 4 a.m. on Friday. “They’re coming for me.”
“She was so absolutely convinced,” Jocelyn said.
Jocelyn called her grandmother’s hospice nurse, who explained that nothing on Helen’s chart suggested she was near death.
The hospice team may have disagreed with Helen’s self-administered prognosis, but did not discount the value of the vision. The dying often talk of death not as a character clothed in reaper garb but as one rendered in the visage of a loved one or kind stranger offering safe passage.
While hospice workers understand this, many families, patients and non-hospice clinicians do not. And so patients keep quiet about what they see.
That, said Dr. Christopher Kerr, one of the few researchers to venture into this territory, strips patients of what is often a great gift. “Patients need permission to experience and express this, because it often carries profound meaning and very much lessens the fear of dying,” he said. “Dying is isolating enough — to deny them this is even more isolating.”
Helen was no champion of the supernatural. She was a deeply beloved family matriarch who lavished attention on the youngest members of her vast family. She was active through her 80s, opting for a walker only as she approached 90.
Still, as Christmas that year approached, Helen’s visions grew more vivid: Her husband John, dead for nearly 20 years, began visiting, and a door materialized on the wall near her bed. Helen frantically searched for keys to open it, until Jocelyn found a spare set to placate her.
Jocelyn said she didn’t share these newer visions with others. She was consumed by the swirl of taking care of her grandmother and her own family.
Helen’s condition began slipping in the three days after she spoke of her impending departure: She was eating and drinking less and sleeping more. Jocelyn exhorted family members to pay their last respects.
Her cousin Bennett MacKinney, who had come east from Phoenix, arrived Thursday afternoon and joined the chorus of family members who were, by now, joking with Jocelyn about Helen’s prediction.
Helen had grown largely unresponsive, and the family suspected that she may indeed be close to dying. But when she woke, her family said, she showed no signs of emotional distress.
By 10 p.m. on Thursday night most of the relatives had departed; MacKinney and Jocelyn chatted past midnight, at which point she moved to Helen’s bedside. MacKinney slept on a downstairs couch for about three hours, and when he woke, he recalled a vivid dream.
In it, MacKinney saw Jocelyn leaning over Helen’s bed, which was now angled toward the wall. Two children were playing on the floor and a third stood at the head of the bed. Moving closer, he saw his grandfather with his arms around Helen, pulling her toward the wall.
MacKinney said he began weeping in the dream, and Jocelyn appeared. She hugged him and said she knew why he was crying. She said: “If I tell you that I am seeing the same thing that you are seeing, then you will know this is really happening.”
At 3:45 a.m., MacKinney heard Jocelyn’s cellphone alarm. He went upstairs, where she and Helen were sleeping peacefully.
Jocelyn’s cat was nearby. McKinney sat and turned on his iPad. “When it said 3:59, I looked at the cat as if to jokingly say, ‘Ok, here it comes.…’”
Nothing happened.
MacKinney went back to the iPad. At 4:05 he looked up at Helen again.
“She made two little coughs,” he recalled, “and her breathing stopped.”
He checked her pulse and her breathing. “I teared up and said, ‘Goodbye, Nana.’”
MacKinney woke Jocelyn. They called the relatives, then traded more stories about their grandmother. Jocelyn told him about Helen’s visions during the week. She talked about the children, and Helen’s husband, and, finally, she mentioned the door Helen had described.
He asked Jocelyn where Helen had seen that door, and Jocelyn nodded toward the wall where, in MacKinney’s dream, their grandfather was carrying their grandmother.
MacKinney paused a long moment. Then he took a deep breath and told his cousin about a dream he’d had.
About the Author Reprints
My Mother passed away 10/9/17 sometime during the night, I found her in the morning. I was her caregiver for over two years. She had been through very much healthwise in the last few years. She had gotten pneumonia twice in a month and the 3rd time turned out not to be pneumonia but breathing issues which they were not able to fully figure out. She was walking, talking and functioning as normal as she had been. Two nights before she passed she woke me up four times with what I thought were dreams but I believe now we’re hallucinations. The next day she seems a little sluggish, I figites that was due to not sleeping well. The day went on and that night she woke again around 11:15. She called me in her room and began to tell me about “the babies” I told her that she was having a dream and there are no babies. I even turned on my phones video to recorded her because I though maybe she was getting a UTI and I would show her doctor what she does. I woke the next morning to find her. She has “hallucinated” in the past because of UTI’s so I didn’t know what I was witnessing. I’m so deeply saddened and wish I had known.
I have been a hospice nurse for 16 years. So often those close to death see children. Why do you think this is?
I too am a hospice nurse and I think the “children” are the manifestation of pure souls sent to prepare and comfort the person. I am convinced of life after death due to the things I have seen and heard.
*waves at Kathleen* Keep up the good work, fellow hospice nurse!
Having spent time with my own parents and others near to death, I get a feeling when they are near, and know, in my self, hat they are on the journey and it is time to say goodbye. Dont ask how I know, I cannot explain it, its just a feeling that they are moving on
This is very interesting. I am happy to hear about Dr. Christopher Kerr’s research as well – I am planning to read more. I have also read books by Dr. Jim Tucker, etc., where research has been conducted with children who report memories of previous lives. In these investigations, it has been possible to trace the previous-life individual, as well as verify details provided by the child (using autopsy records, identity cards, medical records and other documents like birth and death certificates).
I’ve read Jim Tucker, MD’s books as well. He took over the research of Ian Stephenson, MD of the the University of VA. For over 40 years, Dr. Stevens had studied children who remembered past lives, often in great detail. This material wasn’t elicited by hypnosis (which induces a 50% error rate). He had 4000 cases, 2000 of which had been verified, by the time that he died in 2009. Verification means that what the child remembers can be validated—i.e. the towns exist, some people remember him as an adult, he/she can pick out his/her belongings and so on.
Both Tucker and Stephenson argue convincingly that the events remembered are true events, one explanation for which is reincarnation. Dr. Stephenson’s book is called, “Children Who Remember Past Lives,” and it is an interesting read.
Re: deathbed hallucinations. These also may not be due to some brain distortion. The dying person sees them and talks w/ them, and sometimes, visitors in the room can see them, too.
A friend of mine’s mother was dying of renal cancer. She was terminal and in and out of consciousness. As it happened, her younger brother, Billy, of who she was fond, had died unexpectedly a few weeks earlier. My friend didn’t want to upset her mother further. However, her mother began seeing Billy in the doorway of her bedroom. His appearances became more frequent as she drew closer to death. On the day of her death, my friend heard her mother say, “Billy! Why have you got your hat and coat on. Where are you going?”
No one else heard or saw anything. The mother asked for her pocketbook and her coat, b/c she was cold. My friend tried more blankets, but she kept querulously throwing them off, and demanding her coat. Finally my friend put her in her coat and she calmed. She lay back on her pillows, holding her pocketbook across her chest.
Then she said, “You go on, now Billy, I’ll be coming right after.” Then she closed her eyes and died.
Mary Neal, MD has written 2 books on her own NDE (near death experience). She is an orthopedic surgeon who says she has no imagination whatsoever. However, on a kayaking trip to Chile, she drowned when her boat flipped over pinning her under it. When her body was retrieved, she didn’t have a pulse or a heartbeat. Her companions attempted CPR for a long time, and just as they were about to give up, she woke up, cognitive processes and speech intact. She had been underwater for 30 min w/o oxygen. People might survive a 1-3 minute submersion w/o oxygen. People who survive longer periods of anoxia suffer catastrophic brain damage and usually die.
Dr. Neal did survive w/o brain damage, and her books tell of her experiences while she was unconscious. Pretty interesting reads!