What a Difference a Day Makes: Caring for two dying men in one night

Two men, two very different lives, living just a few miles apart, dying on the same day. Palliative care nurse Bee O’Grady tells Helen O’Callaghan how assisting both of these men in their final hours in the same 24-hour period has impacted her.

Bee O'Grady: "If I’m on my own with the person who has just died, I talk a lot to them. I ask them to say hello to my own family, my mother especially — ‘Tell them you met me.’" Photo: Noel Browne

It happened 10 years ago, in winter. 

As an on-call palliative nurse, I’m called to families with somebody terminally ill.