This old lamp stands on my desk since about the time when I first met Dame Cicely in the late 1980s. At that time, I was a medical student and very interested in the hospice movement which has just started in Germany.

The picture next to the lamp is Father Reinhold Iblacker SJ, a Jesuit, who was one of the driving forces behind the German hospice movement. He inspired me and many others in Germany, and he knew Dame Cicely. Through him, I got in contact with her and met her several times.

Since I have moved into research, I had the honour to be supported by Cicely Saunders International. Dame Cicely was always and even in the last months of her life very interested in our research and encouraged us to never stop striving to find better ways of caring for people at the end of their life.