ABSTRACT
Spiritual care involves a willingness to accompany a person on this inward reflective journey. The person is exploring the ground and purpose of their being. Diminished capacities may also impinge on the ability to engage in spiritual practices undertaken alone and requiring minimal external resources. Planning one's funeral is for some people a very tangible way of coming to terms with one's life. Research with patients with haematological malignancies found that while they may not have been seeking a spiritual journey, the severity of their situation almost inevitably ensures that questions about meaning and future direction are going to emerge. Being confronted with a chronic or life-teninthreag condition makes one acutely aware of the fragility of life, and of one's own mortality. As Michael Hare Duke, the former archbishop of St Andrews in Scotland, writing in his late 70s has noted there is an essential ambivalence about ageing.
