Jeanne Van Bronkhorst - Dreams at the Threshold: Guidance, Comfort, and Healing at the End of Life

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Dreams at the Threshold: Guidance, Comfort, and Healing at the End of Life 2015 by Jeanne Van Bronkhorst.

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First e-book edition 2015

E-book ISBN: 9780738744902

Cover art: Shutterstock/183854153/Helen Hotson

Cover design: Kevin R. Brown

Editing: Stephanie Finne

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Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Ann Malain, who has given me a life of joy and belonging,

and for all the dreams we carry in our hearts.

Contents

Part One: How Dreams Help
at the End of Life

: Dreams Support Our Waking Lives

: Dreams Open Important Conversations

: Preparation Dreams Help Us Get Ready

: Visitation Dreams Bring Us Loving Company

: Dreams of the Community

: Grief Dreams Help Us Mourn

: When Dreams Frighten Us

: An Expanding Universe

Part Two:
How to Build a Dreaming Life

: How to Listen to Dreams at the End of Life

: How to Cultivate Your Dreams

Acknowledgments

I am so grateful to Susan Simmons for her editing and coaching. Through our weekly phone meetings she has held my hand, laughed at my jokes, asked pointed questions, and generally helped push my ideas through the agony of development into a final polished product. She is my first and last reader and a good friend, and I feel incredibly lucky to have met her.

Angela Wix at Llewellyn Publications is a warm and generous presence who has now championed two of my books through the publication process. I am grateful for her work and the work of the many Llewellyn staff, especially Nanette Stearns, Editorial Director; Katie Mickschl; and Stephanie Finne, who helped ready this book for publication. There is an extraordinary amount of work involved in getting a book ready for print, and I am grateful you included me in so many steps along the way.

I am indebted to all the people who agreed to be interviewed. Your experiences, both professional and personal, form the backbone of this book. Alice Priestly, Catherine (Kit) Martin, Christopher Sowton, Craig Knorr, Fiona Martins, Gail Tyson, Jay Libby, Judy Callahan, Katherine Rose, Kathy Flores, Mary Van Bronkhorst, Michele Chaban, Monique Seguin, Peggy Zammit, Phyllis Russell, Susan McCoy, Susan Simmons, Tallulah Lyons, and Tony Cheung. Many thanks as well to the research team at the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care in Buffalo, New York: Pei Grant, Christopher Kerr, Scott Wright, and Rachel Depner. Your groundbreaking work is going to help many people.

I am grateful to the many clients and families I have met whove shown me how grace and healing at the end of life is possible. They have enriched my view of the world and given many lessons in the importance of appreciating life in the moment. I am also grateful to my colleaguessocial workers, nurses, doctors, chaplains, volunteer coordinators, volunteers, bereavement program coordinators, administratorswho shared with me their hard-won wisdom over the years. The dedicated professionals at Evergreen Hospice and Hospice of Seattle in Washington, Thedacare at Home/Hospice in Wisconsin, Hospice and Palliative Care Manitoba, Hospice Toronto, and Toronto Grace Health Centre Palliative Care help people live more fully through the end of life with humor, warmth, and passion that has been an inspiration.

I have been fortunate to find good people in Toronto who are passionately engaged with the written word. Thanks to the Canadian Authors Association, the Writers Union of Canada, and the East-End Writers Group for the many ways they offer encouragement to writers in all of our varied literary pursuits.

Nobody writes in a vacuum. I am grateful for the support of my friends and family who ask me for updates, listen to my rants, and share their own stories. You have held me steady through the craziness of writing, always ready to commiserate or celebrate as the occasion demanded. Thank you as well to my fellow dreamers at the International Association for the Study of Dreams, whose passion for dream work and research has opened me to new perspectives on dreaming.

Most of all I am grateful to my partner, Ann, whose love, support, and encouragement makes my writing possible in the first place. I am aware how rare a gift you have given me, and I promise not to waste a day of it.

Jeanne Van Bronkhorst
June 31, 2014

Introduction

Tallulahs father, Jerry, was dying a few years back. In his last week of life he was exhausted and frail. Caregivers watched over him night and day, helping him eat and rest and move a bit when he had energy. Nothing more could be done, and so the family settled in to keep watch. The end of life often looks like this, with no crisis, no pain, and no visible action. To everyone watchingand maybe to himselfhe looked like he had nothing left to do but wait to die. Then, in his final days, he had a dream that changed his life.

Jerry dreamed he was listening to his wife play the piano. Their marriage had been rocky and difficult, and they had separated several times over the years. His wife was a concert pianist before she died, nearly twenty years earlier. In Jerrys dream he sat in a large concert hall listening to exquisite piano music. Then he recognized the pianist was his wife, once again young and at the peak of her career, and his love and admiration for her came rushing back. He told Tallulah,