Waiting Together

Here's a blurb from Precious Dying, by Joe Carter:

Until the cancer made her unable to work, my mother had been a hospice nurse. She had provided care to dozens of people as they entered the dying process, staying with them to the end. I asked her once what the morbid job entailed. "Mostly waiting," she said. "You just stay with them and make them comfortable. Let them know they are not alone."

Her words remind me of Jesus and his followers in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells three of his disciples: "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.... Stay here and watch" (14:34). Then, going a little further into the garden,

[Jesus] fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. Abba, Father, he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will." Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," he said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptations. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. When he came back, he again found them sleeping because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him. Returning the third time, he said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come, Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!" (Mark 14:35-42)