A touching photo of an elderly man in Denmark enjoying “a dignified death” with a glass of wine and cigarette is earning thousands of likes as it is being shared on social media.
Staff from Aarhus University Hospital in Aarhus, Denmark, posted a photo to Facebook on Friday, of the man with a glass of wine and a cigarette watching the sunset from a hospital balcony.
“A dignified death in hospital,” read the post, which has since earned more than 70,000 likes and 4,700 shares.
According to a translation of the Danish-language caption, the man, named Carsten Flemming Hansen, had been hospitalized with an aortic aneurysm in his abdomen. The aneurysm had ruptured and he was bleeding internally.
Too frail to undergo surgery, doctors informed the man that he had only hours to live. Hansen told his nurses his dying wish was to have one last glass of wine and a cigarette.
Though smoking is prohibited in the hospital, his nurses decided to find a way to make it work, sending out his family to get him a pack of cigarettes, while they pulled out some wine left over from the Christmas season.
Nurses then wheeled his bed out onto a balcony where his family gave him his wine and helped light his cigarette.
Hansen’s nurse, Rikke Kvist, later told the Danish news site Avisen.dk that, although it was cold that evening, Hansen’s family stepped out on the balcony to enjoy the sunset and wine as well, and they laughed at Hansen’s wish to keep smoking until his dying day.
"Of course, his relatives were affected by the fact that he was going to die, and they were sad. But it was cozy and there was humour – a really nice atmosphere," she said.
Hansen died later that night.
