When the Person You Love Is Afraid, Angry, or Confused

We imagine a deathbed as quiet, the person serene and reconciled, holding our hand. Often it is not. The person you love may be terrified, or furious at the illness, the doctors, God, or you, or confused, talking to people who are not there, not knowing who you are. This is far more common than the serene picture, and it is nobody’s failure.

Do not correct the weather

Stop trying to fix their state of mind. If they are afraid, the instinct is to talk them out of it. If they are angry, the instinct is to defend or soothe. If they are confused, the instinct is to reorient them: no, Mum, Dad died years ago, you’re in the hospital, it’s Tuesday.

Every one of these instincts is love, and every one of them tends to make things worse. A fear that is argued with grows. An anger that is defended against hardens. A confused person who is repeatedly corrected becomes distressed, because each correction is a small loss all over again.

Think of these states as weather rather than as the person. A storm is passing through the room. You do not argue with a storm. You keep your footing and let it pass. The person is still there underneath it, and they can feel whether you have stayed.

If they say they are frightened, do not say there is nothing to fear. Say “I know. I’m right here.” If they are angry at you, do not explain yourself. Say “I can see how angry you are. I’m not going anywhere.” If they ask for someone long dead, you do not have to lie, and you do not have to deliver the news again either. “You’re thinking about her. Tell me about her.” Follow the feeling rather than the facts.

Steadiness is the gift

What a frightened person needs is someone in the room whose fear is not running loose. What an angry person needs is someone who does not take the anger as an attack, because usually it is not one. It is the sound a person makes when the ground has gone out from under them. What a confused person needs is a steady voice and a familiar hand, not a calendar.

Steadiness is not the same as being unmoved. You can be shaking inside. It is simply staying: not leaving the room, not turning the conversation to your own distress, not needing them to be different before you can be with them. Feel your feet on the floor. Breathe out, slowly. When the storm gets loud, come back to the breath rather than to the argument. Your calm is, right now, the most useful thing in the building.

Not taking it personally

Anger at the end of life lands on the nearest person, and the nearest person is usually the one who has done the most. You gave up months, you slept in a chair, and now you are the one being shouted at.

They are angry at you because you are the one who is safe to be angry at. The doctors will leave. The friends will stop visiting. You are still there, and so you receive what there is nowhere else to put. It is a terrible compliment, but it is a compliment. It does not mean you have to absorb abuse silently; if it becomes too much, step out and come back. But the anger is not really about you, and you do not have to answer it as if it were.

What to say to the frightened

The old masters have words for a dying person’s fear, and the gist is that whatever appears to them now is their own mind, like a dream, and nothing in it comes from outside to harm them. You can say it softly, near the ear, and repeat it: “Whatever you’re seeing, it can’t hurt you. It’s yours. You’re safe. I’m here.” The fuller words to read at a bedside are at A Few Words to Keep Near.