No one should die alone: "Just holding hands" among vigil volunteers in Denmark

A wealth of societal concerns about loneliness has surfaced in recent years, raising questions about the negative impacts of increasing social lacks. Exploring a widespread saying among Danish vigil volunteers that "No one should die alone," we ask: What is at stake in this concern with lonely deaths? And how is relationality practiced at life's end? Inspired by Waldenfels' responsive phenomenology, we explore the concerns and actions of the vigil volunteers as a dynamic of haunting call and hesitant response. The call is voiced in heart-wrenching images and in more clearly formulated critiques of loneliness in aging and dying processes within a transforming Danish welfare state. The response, "just holding hands," comprises a "poeisis of cessation" through minute embodied and sensed acts of being with. The volunteers do not expect their response to remedy the call; they more humbly seek to patch up perceived relational lacks in contemporary Danish society.