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I was working with a terminally ill patient in a hospital. He had accepted that he only had
a day or two to live. When I’d go into his room we would laugh and joke together, sometimes
about his death.
Then his relatives came to see him and as I peeked in his room, his relatives were crying and
grieving their loss, even before he had died. When the relatives left I went back into the room
and asked my patient how was he doing?
He told me that he was doing fine until he saw his relatives. He had accepted his death but his
relatives had not, and they were projecting their grief onto him. It often happens that the person
who is dying is in a much better place mentally and emotionally than the loved ones who remain behind.
The death of a child is one of the most impacting things I have experienced. When I was a combat medic
in Vietnam I carried a dead baby in my arms who I had found laying alongside the road. It was a very
powerful experience for me, for some reason more impacting then the death of an adult.
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