As a priest I remember special moments with people close to death. An old Irish docker in New York, who had drifted away from his roots and from the church, was overjoyed to see a priest as he faced the end, and found that he still knew the words of the "Hail Mary."
Of the many ways to die alone, the worst is when family and friends conspire to deny the approach of death. They may feel, "I couldn't take away her hope." But without acceptance of the truth, they remove the possibility of spiritual companionship at the end.
A doctor remembers with regret how the family conspired to avoid the truth when his beloved Aunt Rose was dying. "We knew & she knew we knew and none of us would talk about it when we were all together. We kept up the pretence to the end. Aunt Rose was deprived, and so were we, of the coming together that should have been, when we might finally tell her what her life had given us. In this sense, my Aunt Rose died alone."
Sacred Space