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Death knocks suddenly where it is not expected, at an unforeseen moment. A type of resignation, of fate (''jin beharra'', ''gertatu beharra zen'') as if our destiny were already written. Exacerbating this concept, the person who dies shows us that there is in something in us that transcends us; as captured in that well-known saying: ''odolak baduela hamar idi parek baino indar gehiago''. Finally, there was ''Herioa,'' the grim reaper, who was believed to come and find the dying, but they did not give up the struggle easily: anyone who was weak would fall easily. That fight was followed by the community with concern (particularly if the ill person was young), and they would speak matter-of-factly of running out of time, of fighting, of remission, of strength, etc. In addition to that context, to which the discourse of the Church would have to adapt, there was a “reading of the signs”.

Finally, there are grounds to believe that the dead continued to be active among many of our compatriots back in “old times” in the form of errant souls, ''arima erratiak. ''Real beings of a middle world, those still active errant souls, dwellers of the shadows, but also of the fugitive flicker, of the deeply exhaled breath, would only enter with great difficulty in the antechamber that the Church prepared for them to wait that great judgement that would presumably by the last. There was a widespread belief that even though the dead left, they did not necessarily disappear. Ultimately, the Church could not contradict this idea and would rather embrace it by giving it a special meaning (thus, God converts the dead child into an angel).