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He had long suffered from tuberculous hemorrhages. One day in 1849 ne was visited by a former schoolmate, a priest, who found his face "cold as alabaster . . . Bubbling with wit and exceedingly kind, he seemed to belong only in slight degree to earth. But, alas, he was not thinking of heaven." Chopin told his friend, "I should not like to die without having received the sacrament, because I don't want to bring grief to my mother. But I cannot take it, because I don't understand it in your way."
Five months later, nonetheless, after more hemorrhages, Frederic Chopin quietly took the sacraments, said his prayers, and died. His last requests were that the Mozart Requiem be played at his funeral and that his heart be taken to Warsaw.