It was dark. From the nursing home window, I watched my daughter help Mom brush off her car, two figures dimly lit under the parking lot lights, snow thickly drifting, obscuring the bluffs beyond them.
Dad had not woken up since he went to sleep two nights ago. He had never rallied that day after the paracentesis to ease his breathing.
The hospice nurse had visited with us about what might or might not happen in this next stage, how long it might or might not last. And so family members, in turns, stayed the nights with Dad.
It was my turn.
I watched from the window. And as Mom drove away, Dad's breath quieted. He had closed his lips. I went over to him, to speak to him, to touch him. And on that soft snowy evening, he left our world to enter the next.
“…the air of the eternal seeping through the physical, the everlasting glory dipping into time.”
Rev. George F. MacLeod, Founder of the Iona Community, Scotland