When I leave, I'll tell the nurses that she needs to feel recognized and loved. She's just given me the key to her agitation. When children are playing in the park and go to pick up a dead bird, you say, "Don't touch, that's dirty." She believes she smells of death; she's afraid of being rejected, pushed away like some dirty thing. We have to be able to help her to see herself differently, and to feel accepted as she is.
— Marie de Hennezel, Intimate Death by Marie de Hennezel, Carol Brown Janeway, translator