To be present at the time of death can be one of the most important moments in life. To see those last, awesome minutes of transition from life into death can only be described as a spiritual experience. And then afterwards, when the body lies still, one gets the strange feeling that the person has simply gone away, as though he has said, ‘I’m just going into the other room. I’ll leave that thing there while I’m gone; I won’t be needing it.’ It’s a very odd experience – the body is there, but the person has gone. No one would say, ‘I am a body’; we say, ‘I have a body’. So what, therefore, is the ‘I’? The ‘I’ or perhaps ‘me’ has just stepped into the other room. It is a strange feeling, and I can’t describe it in any other way. Another thing that is strange is that the body left behind looks smaller, quite a lot smaller, than the living person. The face looks the same, but calm and relaxed, wrinkles and worry lines are smoothed, and a feeling of serenity pervades the entire room. But the person, the ‘I’, has gone. It also greatly helps the process of mourning to see the body after death, and preferably to assist in the laying out. Nurses used to do the job when I was young girl, and we always asked the relatives if they wanted to help. Nurses don’t do it any more, but anyone can ask.
Jennifer Worth, In the Midst of Life
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