"My mother's last few days"

I have nothing but praise for the nursing/medical staff who were with my mother during her last month in hospital. My concern is, as it was known by the family and the staff that my mother was dying, it was distressing that she was in a main ward with only a curtain for privacy around her bed, as there was no bed in a side room available.

On the morning of my mother's death, it added to the distress that while we were mourning her immediate demise, only a curtain divided us and the other female patients in the ward. How awful must it have been for them to try to eat their lunch knowing behind a curtain was a dead woman, and how distressing it was for us as a family to have to suppress feelings as we were acutely aware that these other poor women were the other side of the curtain, trying not to "notice." Death within the NHS seems to have offered my mother little privacy.