"I go in quietly and sit down at her bedside as she sleeps. By spending time with the dying, I have learned to keep silent vigil with those who are asleep, or in a coma, and I have discovered the pleasures of just being there, not doing anything, just being a presence, alert, attentive, like a mother watching over her sleeping baby. The psychoanalyst W. F. Bion has a nice expression to describe this sort of accompanying, which, in his view, has important calming effects, particularly on emotional anguish: He speaks of 'a mothering reverie'."