How hallucinations can help heal the pain of grief

IN A particularly poignant confession, the singer Celine Dion said this week that she still feels the presence of her beloved husband, even though he died in January 2016.

This is incredibly common, with many people reporting actually seeing their partner after their death. This isn’t a ghost or anything scary, but something far more romantic and wonderful.

I first came across this as a junior doctor in A&E. I’d been asked to see Mr Simcock because he had pneumonia but was refusing to be admitted because he had to ‘get back to see his wife’. Perfectly reasonable, except that his wife had died six months before.

‘He says that he sees her every evening and wants to get back to her,’ I was told.

Mr Simcock, who was in his 70s, had been married for nearly 50 years ‘with no time off for good behaviour’, he chortled as I assessed him. When his wife died, suddenly, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

‘And then — she’d probably been buried a week — I saw her,’ he said. She visited him most evenings, he explained, just as he was dropping off, and sometimes they talked.

‘She was always a bit of a nag, so I suppose she feels she needs to keep her eye on me.’

He didn’t find the experience unsettling but, rather, a comfort. Such hallucinations are wish-fulfilment, the brain’s way of giving the bereaved what they so desperately want.

I asked Mr Simcock what his wife would say if she knew he was risking his health for her.

‘She wouldn’t be happy about it,’ he replied, slowly. ‘And if I’m honest, it would be nice to get away from the old battleaxe for a bit.’ With that settled, he was admitted. These tricks of the mind in response to the pain of bereavement are testament to the power of love. They also show what an amazing organ the brain is.