Alice’s Reviews > A Good Death: A compassionate and practical guide to prepare for the end of life > Status Update

...your vigil at the deathbed can provide comfort. You can even encourage the person by giving them permission to go. The idea is to tell the person it is okay for them to go, not to tell them, ‘It’s time to go’. Death is about letting go and, therefore, their choice.

Love and grief are intertwined. Some say you can’t have grief without first having love. So maybe the more we love someone, the more we grieve when they die. We lament, we implore fate, the gods, God just to pass us by when death comes. We fight the grim reaper. We survive the inevitable prospect of our death by blocking it out. We live audaciously so we can be filled with thoughts of life, not death.

Tensions can arise over issues that appear small to others but are important to the family. To expect everything to be joy and light as you are with someone who is dying is not realistic.

Frequently people experience agitation close to death. Hopefully this will be brief, if it is experienced at all. Managing the patient’s anxieties about death in the early stages of dying can help reduce agitation, and medications can help too.

By being involved with the dying patient’s comfort, your family can feel you have provided real care and this will help you with your bereavement.

Encourage life review, if this is what the dying person wants. Life review is a verbal reflection by the dying patient, sometimes quite long.

First, we learn how to accompany someone who is dying, rather than being afraid of them and their death.

“‘So there are obviously the physical aspects of this, that someone is always cared for in a very appropriate way, that their privacy, and the family’s right to privacy, are maintained. But there’s also that dignity of soul, which to me is where we provide care that’s cognisant with the values of the individual.’ “

“... I am so grateful to the wonderful nurses who enabled him to die in the home he loved with his family around him. ‘His death was wonderful. It’s an experience I wouldn’t have missed for the world. I was so glad we had the opportunity to be part of it,’ she said.”