In preparing this special issue of "Omega: The Journal of Death and Dying"

we choose to consider solidarity in a somewhat larger perspective than the other one usually adopted by a clear majority of social support studies. This perspective gives priority to microscopic, immediate, direct transactions between a focal individual - the one affected by the prospect of soon to come death and two classes of people: those included in the core of that person's personal network and the health care personnel treating and accompanying soon to die people, many of them already advanced into agony.