Table 3. Representative Quotes for Theme 2: The Patient in the ICU and the Risks of Separation.

Quote No.	Subtheme	Interview No.
Total ban on visits
1	“The greatest pain for me was the absence. It was such a cut, such a brutal break with him. It was unbearable. Unbearable.… I asked them if I could see him, but they said no. Not seeing each other? The fact that no one could be there to hold his hand and tell him we’re at his bedside, it was my brother’s sure death.”	8
2	“It’s a cocktail of sensations, there’s everything, sadness, anger, frustration, anxiety. You don’t know what to do. You’re bound hand and foot.”	7
3	“When we asked the nurse to stroke his arm or his forehead, to tell him we were there, I think she did do it because she would say, ‘Yes, we’ll do it.’ Even a doctor told us, the night when he died, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to stay with him, I’m going to tell him that you’re here.’ That’s it, that’s all we had between us.”	8
Regular visits throughout the patient’s stay
4	“We managed to go there 3 times. I couldn’t have imagined just dropping her off on Sunday and then never seeing her before she died. That would have been horrible. The separation would have been so much more violent; it was already very hard but if I hadn’t been able to see her again. I don’t know if I would have gotten over it.”	3
5	“I told her that we were waiting for her at home, that we were all praying for her, that we wanted her to come back.… I would just talk to her. I was able to touch her, I had gloves and all the right equipment, so I could put my hand on her and tell her that we loved her very much and that we still needed her.”	3
6	“We were there for him all the way, right up to when he died. We were able to talk to him, stroke him, and kiss him. For me, that was really, really important: to be able to look at his face and to see the parts that I knew so well and that hadn’t changed.”	14
End-of-life visits only
7	“I wish my mother had died when she had her cancers, because then at least we could have been there with her until the very end, every day. I would have done anything to be with her. But that last week in the ICU, it’s as if I didn’t do my duty as a child, that was the hardest thing.… She must have felt so alone, so not cared for by her family.”	13
8	“I think it contributed to the nightmare, a feeling of complete unreality. For 1 month, I was with her all the time in my head. I knew she was in an ICU bed, and yet I couldn’t see her.”	15
9	“It was important to me: above all I needed to touch him. And then I needed to talk to him. It was really good to be able to come. It was life-saving for me.”	4
10	“It was so important to be there. At least he didn’t die alone.”	18
11	“I asked the doctor if I could come and see him. She said, ‘We don’t let families come except when we really have no hope anymore’… And what I said was, ‘But this is when he needs me at his side, now more than ever, not just when there’s no more hope. That’s just not enough.’”	4
12	“Not being able to see him, now that was a bad experience. The ban was really difficult, and even now, we find it difficult to accept. Months later, it still brings us pain.”	11
13	“I managed to say everything that I needed to say to him.”	2

Abbreviation: ICU, intensive care unit.