This is not a meditation on scripture or a philosophical treatise on death. Rather, as the author writes: "the fruit of seven years spent beside people approaching the end of life, who came to spend their final moments in a palliative care unit in Paris." With these patients at the edge of physical endurance—anxious because they know, or refuse to know, that their life is ending—the author, a psychologist and psychoanalyst, engages in dialogue and above all establishes a relationship of tenderness, respect, confidence, and watchful attention. Gradually, this attention eases their anguish, brings a measure of peace, and allows some to transform from within: to grasp the deeper meaning of life, to rediscover death as the natural completion and crowning of existence, "that which gives it meaning and worth."
But none of this could happen through one person alone. Within the center work physicians, nurses, nursing aides—all specially trained in their profession and, more importantly, in welcoming and caring for the terminally ill. From the author's brief but frequent remarks, we understand that these people are bound together by the conviction that they are performing a difficult but essential task, one that demands continuous collaboration and exchange.
The patients—Bernard, Danièle, Dimitri, Patrick, and all the others—remain vivid in the reader's memory, not as faceless beings waiting for death but as people truly "alive" in the deepest sense of the word. Each reveals a distinct character, ways of responding, emotions and struggles that are theirs alone. Each carries a past and must walk a final stretch that sets them apart from every other. They are real people, people like us. And for those of us who cannot even bear to think of our own death or that of our loved ones, their inward transformation, their peaceful encounter with death, are nothing short of miracles.
This testimony has left me with two profound impressions: a new, revolutionary, "vital" way of understanding death, and the power of love that radiates from these pages. The author is a believer and witnesses to her faith—yet she does not rely on it to shore up the deeper truth of death. Instead, she meets her patients with a current of love and tenderness, and it is this that opens them to her, allows her to understand their most secret thoughts, enables her to find the words that can truly help them. Love and respect guide the physicians, nurses, and nursing aides alike: "In the gaze of the nursing aides, the patients surely find something of the loving eyes of their mothers; the way they are tended recalls the care they received in earliest childhood."
And then there is the reciprocal love of children, of mother, of wife, of husband—a love that wishes to hold back those who must leave, that makes parting all the harder for those who must abandon life. Yet love, at times, finds new ways to express itself, to make the farewell more peaceful. Love for the life that has been lived, and for the life that remains—whether a few final months or only days—because even these last moments are precious for growth, for speaking to one another, for forgiveness, for expressing tenderness.
"And when nothing more can be done," the author writes, "one can still love and be loved."
— Maria Teresa Mazzarotto, 1996
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