37 When somebody is seemingly alone when they die A great wailing goes through the land during these times: “I couldn’t even say good-bye to my husband”. Or to my father or my mother. I personally experienced how relatives bitterly suffered because of this. “He died all alone, I wasn’t allowed to go to him, because I was in quarantine myself…” “He was all alone when he died, because I wasn’t allowed inside the hospital.” The relatives have a guilty conscience about not being able to see the seriously ill and to have to let them die alone. In such cases I say or think: Abandon these feelings of guilt! You couldn’t do anything about it. The situation presented itself to you like this. I know that this was cruel. The reality is that nobody dies alone! Nobody! We are always accompanied, also and specifically when we are about to die! Remember the observations made by the English nurse! We are surrounded with love and care. We will actually feel this and we will eventually become completely calm. When people are about to die, they no longer perceive their relatives all that clearly most of the time anyway. But they sometimes “see” those that are invisibly there around them, meaning that they become momentarily clairvoyant at the boundary between life and death. I experienced this with a dying patient at the nursing home. She had a really difficult time of it for many years, probably more so than most people! But once she entered the dying phase and only slept or dozed, I was able to observe how she, wide awake, glanced to one side now and again with a radiant smile, so radiant, it was incredible! She then went back to sleep. This was repeated over the next days. I will never forget this. What did she see there? I assume that it was her deceased mother that approached her, because she was the real reference person in her life. She might have seen her beloved dog, Pelle? Be that as it may, I had never seen this woman smile during the six years that I visited her, her condition was simply too miserable. But she could smile like a child when she was dying.
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