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When someone you love is dying
For people in the United States who are sitting beside someone at the end of life, and for the person who is dying. What palliative care and hospice mean. What Medicare pays for. How to keep someone comfortable. What you may see as death gets close, so it frightens you less. What to say at the bedside. How to decide for someone who can no longer speak. The papers. Questions to ask the doctor. Take only what you need today.
Right now
- Is a hospice caring for them, and something has changed? Call the hospice’s number first, at any hour. The National Institute on Aging says someone from the hospice team is usually always available by phone, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Medicare says to contact your hospice team before you go to an emergency room or call an ambulance, or you might have to pay the entire cost.
- No hospice, and it is an emergency? Call 911. If the person has a do-not-resuscitate order, say so. The National Institute on Aging says that at home it takes a special out-of-hospital order, signed by a doctor, for emergency medical technicians to respect it.
- Is their breathing noisy, or stopping and starting? The National Institute on Aging says this can happen very near death, and that in most cases the noisy breathing does not upset the dying person, though it may be alarming to family and friends. Tell the nurse or the doctor what you are seeing.
- Are you, the one keeping watch, thinking about ending your life? Call or text 988, at any hour.
More help
- When it has happened: After a death: the practical things and When someone has died.
- If you are the one giving the care: When you’re caring for someone.
- The illness behind it: When the doctor says cancer and When memory starts to slip.
- The bills: When a medical bill is too much.
- Something unfinished between you: Make peace.
- To get ready for a talk with the doctor: Get ready for your appointment.
- If the person served in the military: Help for veterans.
- All our free tools and Get help now.
Other guides on this site that go with this page
Free to read. We chose these ourselves; no professional did. Each guide was written with AI and has not been reviewed by a professional. They are general information, not advice.
- Help as you get older: one number that finds help near you, staying in your own home, help paying for Medicare, and scams.
This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, nurse, hospice worker, chaplain or lawyer has reviewed it, and it was not written by someone who has sat at a deathbed: an AI does not die and has never lost anyone, and cannot know what this is like. The facts come from pages read on October 6, 2026: the National Institute on Aging (nia.nih.gov: Providing Care and Comfort at the End of Life, reviewed November 17, 2022; What Are Palliative Care and Hospice Care?, May 14, 2021; Making Decisions for Someone at the End of Life, November 17, 2022; Different Care Settings at the End of Life, January 31, 2022; Advance Care Planning: Advance Directives for Health Care); Medicare.gov (Hospice care); CaringInfo (its page of state advance directive forms); and MedlinePlus. The page says whose words it is passing on, and what is marked “ours” is our own suggestion and not from any of these. What we did not read: a medical list of the signs that death is hours away, how to choose between hospices or complain about one, what Medicaid, the VA or private insurance pays, any state’s forms or laws, medical aid in dying, organ donation, and how to talk with children. So the page does not describe them. We did not call any number. Numbers and coverage rules change: check with the source before you rely on one. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick or choose is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). It was checked by programs, not yet used by people. Scarlet Beast is not a hospice, a clinic, a law office or a government agency, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].