Is there an afterlife?

I spoke to a hospice nurse about her experiences sitting with people in their final moments...

Growing up, we had a dog called Pip. He was a rescue Border Collie, with a shaggy black coat, white paws, a white collar (like a big fluffy scarf) and a white nose. He was afraid of bagpipers, and he loved chasing sticks. We loved him very much. He died when I was 17. A few years later, when mum was ill, in bed at home and drifting between her life and her death, she’d tell us that Pip was with her. That she was happy to see him.

She was on a lot of drugs. She had a brain tumour. It’s easy to dismiss her visits from Pip on those factors, a casual brush-off explained by medicine: what we know for sure. But I have always thought differently. That what she was experiencing was a glimpse into something we do not know: what happens after we die.

I can feel her, you know. Quite often these days. I’ll be sitting and wondering something, what she might have thought of this, or that, and it’s like a voice drifts in, and it’s her voice. I can’t hear her accent, how she said words. Those details are no longer in my memories and, perhaps, wherever she is, they’re not important. I just know, to the very root of my bones, that the words that come, when they come, aren’t from me, they’re hers. They are her guidance.

I don’t get that with my grandma as much. I know she loves me, that she’s proud of me, but she’s harder to come by. I’m suddenly compelled to type she’ll come when I really need her. I don’t know where that came from. But it did.

One of my theories, no, theory isn’t the right word… one of my beliefs, is that I can feel mum stronger due to the afterlife that she is living. She’s off, floating around the world, having adventures and sometimes she pops back to London, to say hi…

She’s not in heaven, where my grandma is, as she wouldn’t like that. I guess what I like to believe is that they both are somewhere that they wanted to be, that our afterlife is as tailored and individual as our current existences.

I’m hesitant in the way I wrote that paragraph. Perhaps you can tell.

I’ve always had a complex about being seen as naïve, silly or stupid and sometimes conversations surrounding the afterlife can venture into this territory. I think this can be cruel, particularly in grief. My beliefs help me. I’m not writing them here as a debate, nor am I writing them so as to tell anyone else what to think. The purpose of this piece isn’t to convince you, the reader, of the afterlife. I understand that some find comfort in what they know, for sure. For others, that comfort is found in the magical.

We exist in the ways that help us to survive.

No, the reason I’m telling you all of this, about Pip, about my own spirituality (as I’m not tied to any religion) is because, as time moves on, I’m connecting with it more. And, as part of that, I was intrigued to read Hadley Vlahos’ book, The In-Between. Hadley’s a hospice nurse in America and is there during so many of her patients’ final moments. She recounts their stories (with permission) in her memoir, as well as recounting her own life and her own belief systems and how they have changed during her job. Her stories aren’t just related to the after-life (although there are some deeply moving accounts of fascinating circumstances) but instead the impactful life lessons she’s taken from her patients, and what they have learned from their own lives and passed onto her. It taught me a lot and I was delighted to be able to speak to Hadley, about her job and what she has learned…

The book is called the In Between and I wondered what the phrase in between means to you?

For me, I have a couple of different meanings. The main one is that I feel like I sit with people, when they’re in between this world and whatever comes next. But then, as well, you’ll see with my own personal journey, that I end up in therapy because of some things that happened. That therapist really helped me with learning that things don’t have to be black and white. In life there’s an in between and it’s OK if there’s this grey area of life where I don’t have the answers.

What would you say is your belief when it comes to an afterlife?

I do believe that there is an afterlife. I don’t really assign it to any religion, I just say that I am spiritual. I don’t have any issue with religion at all, I believe that – at the core – religion is teaching us to live a good life, so that we can be together in the afterlife. I think that’s wonderful I just haven’t identified with one in particular.

Where do you think your belief has come from?

When I went into hospice, I didn't believe in anything anymore. I grew up extremely religious, and that started to shake when I lost my friend in high school. I wasn't getting sufficient answers. When I worked in the ER and really saw like the true force of the world I was like, you know, I think that these ER nurses are right, there's no way that kindness comes after this. Why would this even happen? But then being in hospice and seeing all these experiences, it doesn’t really make sense for me anymore to say that these are all just coincidences.

I really believe in the afterlife. But then I’ve explored visiting mediums and it’s hard to trust people that make a profit out of grief, and the prospect of an afterlife. I think that can make people cynical, so it’s really lovely to read your real life experiences that are not driven by any need for profit.

I also wanted to say that for me and my stories, every other hospice nurse has some too. I was worried about the reaction from them but I got so much love and support from other hospice nurses saying “I’m giving it to everyone I know so they can get a taste of the experiences that I have.” 

One of the things that really comforted me, reading your book, was when you said you’ve seen so many patients choosing the time of their own death. Because I wasn’t there when my mum died, we had all gone home and she was just there with my grandma, her mum. We did used to think “that must have been what she wanted, she wanted to be with her mum.” I wondered what others things that you’d like people to know about dying, that could comfort them within their own grief?

That’s a big one. I do get people taking it in a different way and they think “they didn’t wait for me, why wouldn’t they wait?” But I completely believe it goes both ways, where I think sometimes people are protecting [their loved ones.] I’ve sat there with a patient, knowing family members are on the way, and a patient will die before they get there. And I have to break that news and I see how they react I sometimes think to myself “this patient was protecting them.” It’s not that they’re acting in a bad way but with the grief being so much seeing them die, taking their last breath, probably would have been too much.

But then there are stories like Sandra’s [who died as soon as her daughter arrived, and was holding her hand] where, I think, that her daughter would have carried a lot of guilt, thinking ‘why didn’t I make it on time? Why did I go to the bathroom at the airport.”

The other thing is, people will see their deceased loved ones no matter what their religious background or cultural background. [Hadley tells stories of patients telling her that their passed sister/husband is in the room with them, usually just before they die.] They all have their deceased loved ones come to get them, and I believe that everyone does have someone, even if they don’t tell me. I have patients who are no longer able to verbalise things to me anymore, but they’ll look to the sky. I find it so comforting.

It's very nice to think that the people we have lost will be with someone they love. I think one of your patients said “I’m so excited to see my husband again” and it was really moving to think that my grandma is now with her granddad as that’s what she always wanted.

They’re always at peace, and it brings them happiness. I get the question of who will come, and people say “I don’t want my dad to come” and I’ve never had someone come for them that they don’t want to be there. I’ve even had dogs come for people. I think your mum will come for you.

I was just reading the book over my lunch hour and I had to sit and cry for ten minutes at the story of the girl who brought sand inside for her friend [Hadley tells the story of a dying young woman who wanted to go to the beach one last time, when it becomes apparent she’s too unwell to make it down, her friend runs out and gathers a bucket of sand and places it all around her friend’s feet saying ‘you made it to the beach Lil, you made it. I love you. You made it.’ And, at that moment, Lily took her last breath.]  I just wanted to send that to all of my friends and say “I would do this for you.”

It's stories like this that made me think the book is also incredibly romantic. Not just in the traditional sense, of husband’s and wives doing extraordinary things for each other but also the family and friends who keep caring and loving in even the hardest of moments.

I've learned that there's a lot of unsung heroes and caregivers, really, and we don't really talk about them very often. We don't really recognise people like that who are staying and caring for someone for years and caring for their every need. That’s hard to do and people don't understand how difficult it is and the amount of love [there is]. Just pure love goes into doing that, saying [for example] even though you have dementia and you don't even remember me, I know that love we have and I will dedicate my life to making sure that you're okay. That's beautiful in my opinion.

And how has working in this field kind of made you consider your own death? Has it changed your views when it comes to that? Do you feel less afraid of it?

I used to be very scared of my own death. But I feel like we all have a purpose on this earth and when it's completed then we've done it. I feel like I have more things to do but maybe I don't, maybe I've done what I need to do and if I die tomorrow that's okay with me. Because of seeing so many people die and seeing how peaceful it is for them, it doesn't scare me.

You’ve faced loss yourself, what would you say you’ve learned about grief?

I have learned that grief is a forever thing. And I think in our societies, we think of it as a hurdle to get over. But in reality, what I've really come to learn over the years, is that your life will grow around grief. [It’s just that] the days that just knock you out and you can't do anything get less and less. But then it could be 100 years in it could still hit you like a tonne of bricks. And you know the idea is to just grow your hobbies, grow your life, grow your things around that gap. Whenever we put it as this goal to reach that’s an unobtainable goal. It makes people feel like they're failing.

That's pretty much why I set up my newsletter in the first place was because I was still feeling the impact of my mom's death  years later, and I felt so ashamed of that. But as soon as I started to talk about it with people, they felt the same and said things like “I felt I should have just got over it in that first year, I should have ticked everything off” but that’s not how it works.

What have been some of the biggest life lessons you’ve taken from your work?

I know one of the biggest ones is that I've learned to really find happiness in every day. And that has a lot of different meanings. For one, it's making sure that I'm being intentional with my time with my kids and my family because a lot of people tell me that they regret not spending time.  But a really, really big takeaway, from a lot of these patients, is that it it's the everyday where you have to find your happiness, not the yearly vacations or the huge wedding or the of your child's birth, whatever it is. You have to really build in this happy life every single day in order to not look back and think ‘oh, I wasted it.’ It's so common, for all of us to be like, ‘when I can get that bigger house, or go on that trip to Hawaii then I'll be happy.’ I've really learned to just be like, ‘I get to wake up another day. I get to do what I love.’

Hadley’s book The In Between is out now.

What do you all think? Does spirituality and connecting with the idea of an afterlife help you? Or do you prefer to think of our life as one life, that we live in the here and now? Let me know! And, as always, please share with friends if you enjoyed this, it really helps.