David Wynn and Carolyn Lyon #

https://storycorps.org/listen/david-wynn-and-carolyn-lyon-171124/

The scene could be a bleak one — a hospital room, a patient near death, and no family or loved ones present during their final moments.

• bleak (adj. ) - If a situation is bleak, there is little or no hopefor the future.

David has been doing these vigils since 2008; Carolyn began in 2011.

• vigil (noun. C/U) - an act of staying awake, especially at night, inorder to be with a person who is very ill or dying, or to make a protest, or to pray

When they get a call from the hospital staff that someone is alone and nearing death, David and Carolyn rush to the hospital — even in the middle of the night — to sit by the side of a stranger.

• rush (verb.) - to (cause to) go or do something very quickly

The nurses said that he was estranged from his family.

• estranged from (adj. formal) - If you are estranged from your family orfriends, you have had a serious argument with them and are no longer friendly with them.

Turns out it’s his son.

• turn out (phrasal) - If people turn out for an event, they go to be there or to watch.

And they made this reconciliation at the very end of his life like that.

• reconciliation (noun. C/U) - a situation in which two people or groupsof people become friendly again after they haveargued