He was dying from cancer which had eaten him up from his bones to his brain. He hadn't been talking much for about 2 weeks, was super anxious and not sleeping. We called hospice & hi minister and changed his regimen for pain medicine, boosting up the dosage. The next day we got a wonderful hospice nurse who took the extra time and helped dad get up and around in his wheelchair. He ate dinner with us (yogurt for him) and was so happy, telling us how much he loved sitting at the table & looking at the beautiful yard mom had made with all the beautiful flowers and how happy he was to be there at the table with all his family. Then he got put in bed, sitting up, and the nurse said dad wanted to talk to each one of us separately. Dad loved Elvis' religious music, so we put on that tape and each one of us spent time with dad. That was so precious to me and my sister, each of us will never forget it. My dad and I had a contentious relationship, he was a Jerry Falwell follower and Evangelistic Christian and very conservative and I was exactly the opposite. However, on this day, we got beyond that and to the bedrock of love. He told me he loved me and he was proud of me for staying true to my beliefs, whether he believed that way or not, and I was able to share the same type of feelings with him. I sat beside him on the bed, we held hands and sang to the songs together, something we'd always loved to do when I was a child. We also sang 12 days of Christmas, (it was August) always our favorite Christmas song to sing together. He asked me to help take care of mom, said she'd need me and my sister and please be sure to be there for her whenever she needed. I promised him I would do that. The next morning, he couldn't talk at all and was turning blue and he passed away that night, never having woken up. I thank God for the gift of clarity given him the day before he died. The whole family was at peace because of this gift.
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