He hovered around her, fluffing her pillows and clearing away her uneaten breakfast. He cheerfully reported all that he had accomplished so early in the day, and wondered what else he could do for her before taking off again into his busyness. And she lay there smiling, and dying. All the while, she talked to me about the meaning of her life. She made it clear she didn’t need his help with that; she only needed from him what he had to give. The dance of life as death approach

When the nurse told me there was a room she’d like me to visit, she said the patient was on hospice care and that her daughters were not handling it very well. A mother was dying and her daughters were falling apart. I was intimately familiar with this scene. The patient had cancer. She was nearing death. She was nearly comatose. Her hair was nearly gone and her skin was nearly perfect. This was nearly the exact scenario I had lived through 20 years ago. Big deep breath. I to

He hovered around her, fluffing her pillows and clearing away her uneaten breakfast. He cheerfully reported all that he had accomplished so early in the day, and wondered what else he could do for her before taking off again into his busyness. And she lay there smiling, and dying. After he left, she continued talking to me about the meaning of her life. She didn’t need his help with that. She only needed from him what he had to give. The dance of life as death approaches is i