I died … There had been rehearsals … When the time came I knew all about the lung heavy with water that the heart could not negotiate, so that not enough blood circulated in the alveoli, and there was oxygen starvation as well as drowning … Let me see. What was happening when I died? My prayer had been answered. I was alive when I died. That was all I had asked for and I had got it.
Pencil notes by Donald Winnicot on the inner- flap of a notebook, discovered by his wife, Clare, on the day of his death, in 1971 (cited)