Friday, November 17, 2000

Mary C. Bridgman
Dispatch Accent Reporter

Four months after he died last year, Dan Grieser returned to say goodbye to his wife, Marjory.

He walked into the back bedroom and hugged her as she lay on a recliner half asleep.

"He looked wonderful," said Mrs. Grieser. "He was his old self."

They kissed. Then Mr. Grieser told her he needed the car.

"Don't be silly," she responded. "You can't drive; you're dead."

He reassured her, then left.

Mrs. Grieser awoke for a moment then slipped back into a semiconscious state -- alert to surroundings, but asleep.

Mr. Grieser reappeared, wearing his tweed hat and raincoat.

Mrs. Grieser wanted him to stay, but already he was gone. "I opened my eyes and considered what happened," she recalled. "It was very real."

The day after the dream, Mrs. Grieser phoned a friend who told her that 18 years after her husband died, he, too, had visited her.

After-death visits -- though impossible to explain -- are common among those who care for loved ones through extended illnesses, according to Steve Rice, chaplain at Kobacker House, a hospice.

"When a person is so close to you -- is a soul mate -- you don't lose that part of yourself even after they die," Rice said. "I can't explain that logically or scientifically."

Mr. Grieser, a retired physicist who had metastatic bowel cancer, has returned a half-dozen other times, though not since this past summer.

The dying, too, envision meeting again with loved ones they have lost. Family members often appear to them in the days and weeks before they die, Rice said. Ted Blumenstein, chaplain of Hospice of Columbus, sees these so-called "cross-over" experiences as part of preparing for death.

"It is not frightening," Blumenstein said. "It is comforting. There is no retribution."

Rice sometimes conducts meditation sessions and offers guided imagery to his hospice patients, which can lead to cross-over experiences.

For believers, cross-overs are evidence of an afterlife; nonbelievers, too, gain hope, Rice said.

"They hear it so many times before they accept it: 'I am going to die, I am mortal,' " he said. "What happens within them when they do accept it is miraculous. They find a new hope that's very significant."

Dying children also are visited, said the Rev. Susan Kyser, director of pastoral care at Children's Hospital.

Jesus Christ and angels come to them in their dreams as well as when they are conscious and lucid, especially when their parents are not present. "The angels are friendly and may talk to them," Kyser said.

Some children hold tenaciously to life, to protect their families. Yet they sense a spirit and know that love lives on even when they are gone, Kyser said.

Days before Mr. Grieser died at the Kobacker House, where he spent his last two months, he saw what he considered to be his future: a place with beautiful music, a rainbow of colors and lovely birds.

It was an immense comfort to him.

"Oh now I see, everything is one," he told his wife.

Every year, 2.3 million people die after an extended illness. But just one in seven have the type of palliative care that a hospice offers -- treating the pain and discomfort of disease and helping terminal patients prepare emotionally and spiritually for death.

Hospitals, where 80 percent of people die, rarely help the dying prepare for the inevitable; they are focused on saving lives.

Rice was on call recently when a 64-year-old man was rushed to an emergency room after he fell from his roof while cleaning gutters. His wife found him and called 911.

During the decade before the fall, which proved fatal, the man had undergone multiple surgeries, including heart bypass.

"We had no plans," his widow told Rice. "He wouldn't talk about it. I don't even know where the papers are. I don't know what he wanted."

The man left behind unresolved issues. "He was living life the way he wanted to, so he had made choices," Rice said. "But for his wife, where was the comfort in his doing what he wanted to?"

The sense of peace that accompanies a readiness to die comes from communicating feelings. Counseling, prayer, meditation and keeping a journal can help.

Even when death comes suddenly, having discussed its possibility -- and the wishes of the departed -- can be an enormous help to those who are left, Rice said.

Mr. Grieser stretched a six-month prognosis of death into 21/2 years. Though the caregiving was exhausting, the time together was a blessing, Mrs. Grieser said.

"I don't think there's anything I could have done differently," she said.

The day before Mr. Grieser died, she was sleeping on a sofa in his hospice room. Through a hazy twilight, she saw two hooded figures at the foot of his bed.

It was time, she realized, for him to go -- and she had to help.

At his bedside holding his hand, she told him to find the place with the beautiful music, vibrant colors and lovely birds.

And he did.