I’ve been sitting in this favorite yellow child’s chair — a garage sale find — a good part of the day. To be near him. To catch every word he says. Hubby has let his filters down these past few days. He is childlike at times, in an endearing way. He scolds me, rolls his eyes, stalls when he doesn’t want to take his meds.

 

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We, in turn, run to get everything he asks for. Because it is what we—his wife, his daughter—want to do.

“Twenty-four to forty-eight hours left,” the hospice nurse said this morning. “Renal failure,” she said.

“Did we do everything?” he asks.

“Yeah, we did,” I reassure him. “We made memories and took adventures, we lived well, we loved each other, we loved our kids, our grandkids, our family. We did everything that’s most important.”

He’s asleep now. According to the hospice nurse, his breathing will slow down until eventually he stops taking in air. “It’s a painless way to pass,” she said.

And we did everything most important.