eing with Ethel at the time of her death was one of the grandest things that ever happened to me. We were two women in a moment of time, sharing our humanity in the sweetest, gutsiest way. We were real, honest and true with each other. Being there together mattered to both of us. We hardly knew each other. I was her hospice volunteer and she my very first client, but we shared these last days and finally, the last moments of her life with fierce devotion to a sacred cause. We were both very much alive in her dying. Our eyes glowed. We weren’t exactly friends, but at that pregnant time we loved each other. In a way, we were both being born--she to new life beyond portals of mortal flesh and I, to more determined living in mortal flesh. I had never been certain I wanted to be here. She was now being forced by cancer to leave. 
     The first time I saw Ethel, she was sitting in her living room, looking rather small and neat upon the crisp rectangular cushions of her green 1960s-style sofa. Her slim body was bundled in a dark, fuzzy cardigan sweater above her beige polyester slacks. Her hair was a puff of downy white-white like my own grandma’s, and she beckoned me in with a smile and her liquid blue eyes. 1 could feel her warmth and the delicate nature of her soul from the start. "You’ve come," she said, "Welcome," not moving to greet me, but waiting. 
      Ethel was waiting for a lot of things in those days of her life, and this was the beginning for me of waiting with her. We had time at this point to learn to explore this waiting together. After all, for now she was still up and about. Both of us knew this stage would not last forever. 
     I sat across from her and searched her face sympathetically as we began knowing each other. I would come several days a week at first, and later more. We would play it by ear, improvising as we went together, adjusting as she eventually would go on alone. 1 would fix her tea, get her pills, buff her nails, and some days maybe help her to wash her hair in the shower. 
     Ethel’s right arm had gotten stiff and painful, a preview of things to come. She laughed and sighed as she showed me how far she couldn’t lift it anymore. I held her hand that day--it was cold, the skin smooth and white-translucent—as I polished the tips of her too-long nails with an emery board. She said they’d been getting in her way and she was glad to have it done. To me, the atmosphere felt like church. The wonder and the intimacy of this human connection was thick in the room....