Center to Advance Palliative Care

I am one of two chaplains which serve our community. As we have both residential and community members, we tend to have some history with each resident/patient.
I agree about what was previously posted: calm, presence, walking with and so on. We have a Butterfly Cart which is put in the room of a patient who is on the path toward death. It has a refrigerator for the family to keep cool drinks or food, reading material and spiritual reading material (many faiths) and a cd player with a collection of music.
As a chaplain and rabbi I am called upon to officiate at many funerals and memorials. People have commented often "if only I had known that this person did_____ or enjoyed ____ or came from____" and so on. Now we make it a practise to fully interview patients long before their deaths, we even make dvds of them. So that in the course of their care we know what they like, what they believe, what their favorites are and so on.
In this way I am not only a loving presence who can offer prayer and support and silence, I also know this person through their life story so that we are brothers and sisters not "the living" and the "near dying." We are one.
And after all is said and one, isn't unity what we are alll striving for somehow?

Rabbi Arthur Rosenberg, Chaplain
Motion Picture and Television Fund, Woodland Hills, Ca.