If only we are sensitive enough to heed their unspoken wish, many will tell of the awakening experiences which have come to them in the final stages of their lives. Indeed, to recognize death as a friend and not an enemy gives young and old alike the precious opportunity of resolving hidden fears and coming to a quiet acceptance and preparation for the great change. We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our soul the way a cocoon encloses the future butterfly, and when the time is right we can let go of it. . . . Behind every life and death is a divine purpose, and whether our years be few or many is of less consequence than the tenor and quality of our deepest aspirations. Two more opposite figures than Princess Diana and Mother Teresa would be hard to find, yet friends of the heart and spirit they assuredly were, bonded by loving identity with the outcaste and helpless, the ill and the dying.
Compassion knows no barriers.