My mother, who was dying of cancer, was transferred to a hospice ward at a local hospital. My brother and I visited her every day, and we were usually the only visitors there. One day my brother got up to stretch his legs, saying he'd be back soon. He was gone for over an hour and I went looking for him. I found him down the hall in another patients room watching TV and chatting with an old man. Later that night I asked my brother how it came to be that he spent over an hour watching TV with a patient he didn't know.

He said he was walking along the hall, and the elderly patient saw him smiled at him. Brother returned the smile, stepped in the patients room and asked him what he was watching on TV. That started a conversation about John Wayne (the patients favorite actor) and my brother was invited to join the gentleman and watch the rest of the movie. And so he sat there, talking about stuff, and watching an old western with a stranger. There after, for the 2 weeks before my mother died, my brother would go down the hall and visit with his new friend.

This is who my brother is. He's never met a stranger. The old man never had a single visitor other than my brother for those 2 weeks.