The chair placed beside a bed can turn a room for sleeping into a room for waiting.

Furniture can change the purpose of a room. A chair moved beside the bed announces that someone will be sitting there, awake, while another person sleeps, and the space converts from rest to vigil without anything being said. Arrangements carry news we would struggle to speak.

If you are the one in that chair, the sitting is doing something even when it feels like nothing. Presence is most of what is being asked. Let people bring you food and take shifts, because the vigil is easier to keep when it is shared, and asking for that is not a failure of devotion.