The other night we had a patient come into ED who subsequently died.
He was an elderly aboriginal gentleman and his relatives told us that during his life he had been a pastor and a renowned artist and an elder in the community.
When he died I had to lift his head up in order to remove the oxygen mask, and I was surprised how heavy his head was. The rational part of my brain said that it was because there were no longer any muscles supporting the weight of his head, but the sentimental part of my brain couldn’t help but pipe up and suggest quietly that perhaps the reason it was so heavy was because he was an important man, and that his was a head that was full of an awful lot of wisdom.