Episode Details

Dying alone in a nursing home, out of reach of loved ones, is something many would rather forget. Yet stories like this keep surfacing, and they matter, because they expose what we actually value.

We isolated the elderly to protect them from catching Covid, which might kill them. That would have been unfortunate, of course, given they were living in nursing homes in the hope of meeting a new partner, having a couple of kids, and heading back to university to start over.

They were not. They were in the waiting room for God. And from what I saw working in nursing homes, what they wanted most, while they waited, was company.

Did Covid show us how frightened many of us are of death? Did it strip our values down to the self, until not dying ourselves was all that mattered?

If so, then no matter who is beside you when you go, you will still die alone. No one will matter to you more than you.