"Visiting with Mr. C. taught me that my specialty as a hospice volunteer is fulfilling last requests. We, the living, might list our aspirations for the future as a mental “bucket list,” an elaborate, bullet-pointed chronicle of the foreign countries we’ll visit or the magnificent adventures we’ll light out on. We do this because we think we’ll get a timely warning of when to buy the plane ticket, and we assume that our bodies will be strong enough to pursue last adventures. These hopes allow us to push death as far into the future as possible, to bargain with ourselves for more time to check things off the list. But for many of my patients it doesn’t work out that way. By the time I meet them, they know that their days are few. Their prognosis has curtailed the future they’ve imagined and stripped away all but what is most essential. My patients fear dying alone or in pain, and they want me to see them as they see themselves — as people who have had careers and families and rich experiences — and not as a fading patient in a bed. The truth about last requests is that by the time patients have accepted that their lives are ending, the wishes they have are often much simpler than a safari in Africa or a ride in a hot-air balloon." - rønin