Many of us have heard of family members or friends having epiphanies at the end of their life. These profound experiences are increasingly being recognised as common — and possibly essential — elements of the natural human process of dying. [Dr Chris] Kerr has recorded thousands of what he calls patients’ end-of-life dreams and visions (ELDVs). These vivid experiences, he says, are not mere hallucinations but a profound element of the dying brain’s process that brings reassurance, reconciliation and resolution to relinquish their grip on life. He published a study_ showing how nearly nine in ten dying patients report experiencing at least one ELDV. “About 10 per cent have distressing end-of-life dreams where traumatic events get replayed,” he says. In one case John, a Second World War veteran who had left colleagues dying on the Normandy invasion beaches, had been tormented by survivor’s guilt. But at the end of his life he had a vision of himself back at Normandy, with a dead comrade saying they had come to fetch him home. “Reconciliation and forgiveness seem common themes. They give people the peace they need to let go of life,” Kerr says. “I am awestruck by the way that patients are united with the most important people in their lives emotionally and developmentally,” Kerr says. “Often the encounters are with people they lost in childhood. We don’t leave this life alone but with a parent, sibling, deceased child or beloved pet.”