Those, like myself, who accompany the dying know just how much we receive as a gift simply by accepting the commitment to embark on this ultimate experience in a human relationship that is proffered to us by the dying patient, sometimes even unconsciously. The gamble of this ultimate relationship seems to reside in the attempt to reveal oneself as one really is, or, to use Michel de M'Uzan's expression, to "give birth to oneself in the world before leaving it."
— Marie de Hennezel, Intimate Death by Marie de Hennezel, Carol Brown Janeway, translator