Frank was a 68-year-old man recently diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer when I first visited with him and his wife. It was just the two of them, and the calm and peaceful way they accepted the inevitability of his death was amazing to see.

You had the sense that death was not new to them or that they had come close to it before. In time I discovered that they had lost their only son in combat in Vietnam and because they were both believers, they knew they would see him again.

Some people receive multiple glimpses of heaven. I received a note from a lovely woman who had sensed when her grandfather died years ago, although he was very far away. She realized he had come to let her know he was leaving and to reassure her of his love. In this letter she tells of the recent death of her husband of 39 years.

A while back, I was in charge of raising money to serve hospice patients in our care who had no resources to pay for themselves, with the help of a group of young professionals known as Esprit de Corps. The group’s board of directors was made up of lawyers, CPAs, public-relations directors and banking specialists, all of whom were very compassionate, connected and caring.

Several years ago, a wonderful French Canadian woman who had been my volunteer assistant for many years was dying. She and I had worked closely together in a hospice setting and she had heard the conversations I often had with the terminally ill and dying patients in my care.

It is wonderful to speak with patients who are on their journey home to heaven, back to the God who created them. Some are very sure of who God is because they have spent a lifetime with him and they are unafraid. Others are searching for this mysterious God they have heard about but not known personally.

Some are not sure the lives they have lead are forgivable, and so this understanding of unconditional love, which God is all about, is hard for them to grasp. You hear these stories when you take the time to sit and listen, really listen.

When our lives are ebbing away and we are beginning to decline and getting closer to death, we sense it very clearly. We see and hear things differently.

A wonderful and handsome couple who lived in my neighborhood had been happily married for 52 years. Together they lived the good life, entering into everything they enjoyed with zest and spirit. They were well thought of by everyone who knew them.

Cancer reared its ugly head and the lovely wife struggled with it for years. The compassion and caring between them was a beautiful thing to see. She died about a month ago and moved into the heavenly home she knew was waiting for her.

Some friends invited me to have breakfast with them one morning after Mass. Their daughter, who was in her thirties and looked 18, was prayerfully contemplating a career in nursing, to which she felt God was pointing her.

Getting accepted into nursing schools these day can be very difficult, and so she asked me to pray that if it was God’s will for her, she would hear very soon. She did this week and is ecstatic at the prospect of one day becoming a hospice nurse. She will make a very good one.

The other evening I watched a Johnson & Johnson commercial celebrating nurses and all they do for their patients. The nurse introduced herself as a hospice nurse and was seated on the side of the bed with her patient, Berta Olsen.

A new friend recently told me about her elderly mother, who had been diagnosed with dementia years before. It was so painful for my friend not to be recognized by the one who had raised her so lovingly and whom she loved very much.

I have a long-held belief that people with dementia have frequent moments of lucidity and understanding that we do not know about. They experience momentary enlightenments during which they remember and understand just as we do, although we do not know about it at the time.