It is not mere metaphor to say that birth and death are the same kind of work. They say that all babies look alike. The grain of truth in that observation comes of the fact that we all have to scrunch our way through the birth canal. There are no pointy noses in the nursery. And just as all of us share one face in the nursery, so we share one face on the deathbed. As the body shuts down, there is a kind of winnowing to essentials— a passage as narrow and demanding, in its own way, as the birth canal. Skin stretches pale and tight over bone, pulling back from the open mouth and leaving features hollowed, translucent, honed to a vanishing point. How ironic that this phenomenon is often called the death mask. It is not a mask at all, but the true face of our mortality revealed in all its beauty.

Perhaps I saw that face coming to Peter as I swabbed his lips and gums, though he would journey two more days with his family by his side. I had been visiting him for several weeks, reading him novels, stories, poems. It came to be that Julie and Helen would sit or lie down next him and listen, too. And the greatest gift of all was their willingness to let me share with them in Peter’s care. This gift of intimacy was not a function of how long I’d known them or how familiar we had become. It came to all of us through Peter— from the place where the body’s urgent need for comfort in its final journey meets the simple, human response of a loving touch. There are no strangers there, only loved ones, and love flowing through us first and last.