Mine is quite sad actually, so don’t read it if you don’t want a bit of a sad story.
I was very young and working for a care agency, I was sent to a nursing home I’d never been in before. One of the residents was dying, she wasn’t able to talk and I’d never met her before, but she’d been refusing to get washed/dressed before her DD arrived to see her before she passed. (She had end of life symptoms and the doctor was coming out to administer the morphine later) The nurses and other regular staff had tried but she was not wanting clothes on, she was refusing to wear incontinence pad and was throwing her water on the floor. I went in and introduced myself to her, I held her hand and asked her could I give her a wash and some fresh pjs, so she was comfortable, she nodded her head. I gave her a bed bath, put a nightie on her, sorted a pad out and changed her bedding. (I’m a bed change ninja, if I’m blowing my own trumpet) anyway this lady’s DD arrived, it was too upsetting for her so she left very quickly. The lady wasn’t speaking but was devastated, she sounded like an Animal in pain. The nurses tried to calm her and a doctor was on the way to give her medicine. I was due to go home but I popped my head in and asked her did she want me to stay, she had been throwing things off her bedside tables but held my hand. I cancelled my afternoon appointments and stayed with her. I lay on her bed with her, she was tiny, and she slept on my chest, like an infant. She had her doctor sort the syringe driver out and she died on me a few hours later. The nurse in charge of that home came in to thank me and offered to pay for my time, but I said no, for some reason she saw me as a friend and I felt it too, it wasn’t about my job or money, she just needed to have someone cradle her in her last hours and as I didn’t have to be professional as it wasn’t my ordinary place of work, I was able to just do that. My biggest compliment. She trusted me as a stranger enough to keep her company through her most vulnerable time. She was my first death too and over the years I’ve comforted a good few more people at the end of their lives. It’s always sad and I always stayed with them, I never left a shift and passed over someone who was dying to another person unless it was absolutely necessary, I even have done school runs and gone back if the person has asked me to stay. But that lady trusting me as a complete stranger, made me confident about something I was dreading, and no matter who a person is, what they’ve done or who they were is no longer relevant, all that person wants is to be shown kindness and love. And I might not ever have had a flashy house or car working crappy NMW jobs, but I had plenty of love to give those who needed it in their final hours.