The first time Kelley Clem witnessed an end-of-life vision, her patient was a little boy.
The 7-year-old had been lying, unconscious, in his bed when he suddenly lifted his arms into the air.
To Clem, a hospice nurse of three decades who works with both children and adults, this first seemed like a familiar gesture — she’d frequently seen dying patients raise their arms straight into the air, a phenomenon known among hospice caregivers as the “death reach” — but then the boy suddenly curved his arms.
“Like this,” Clem said, holding her arms as though embracing another body, then running her palm across it. “It was as though someone was holding him,” she said, “and he was stroking their back.” She raised her eyebrows. “And I thought, well, that’s new.”
Over the years, Clem cared for several children who, in their final days, alluded to someone unseen in the room who was offering them guidance or instructions. She remembers one 5-year-old boy whose parents did not want him to know he was dying, but he told Clem he was already aware:
“I’ve already been told. I know what’s going to happen,” he said, as he stared intently at something or someone Clem couldn’t see. “I’m trying to concentrate on what they’re saying.” Another young girl asked not to be distracted, insisting: “He’s here with me now, and I’m trying to focus.”
But even after observing these moments many times as a clinician, she said, she was astounded when her own 84-year-old mother experienced a deathbed vision three years ago in Clem’s home.
Her mother had been unresponsive for days, unable to move without help for months. But the day before she died, Clem said, her mother suddenly opened her eyes, sat upright and swung her legs over the side of the bed. When she spoke, her voice was strong and clear, Clem recalled.
“And she said, ‘I’d like to thank you all for coming, but you’re much too noisy, and I need you to leave. I’m not ready yet.’”
Clem saw her mother’s gaze settle on a space just to the left of where Clem’s brother stood in the room: “She says, ‘And that means you, too, George,’” referring to her own late grandfather, her most beloved relative.
“Then she laid right back down,” Clem said, “and died the next morning.”
She smiled as she told me this. To Clem, a practicing Catholic, what she’s seen — as a nurse, as a daughter — has always felt like “a calming confirmation” of her beliefs, especially in the moment she shared with her mother.
“As someone who had witnessed this for years amongst others, I can’t tell you the impact that it had, as a person who loves this woman,” she said. “The comfort and the joy and the peace that it brought me. It was such a gift.”
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