A companion for life’s final journey.

Should I keep talking? Remind him who I was? Correct him when something didn’t make sense? Or simply meet him wherever he was?

I didn’t know. But I made one decision. I wasn’t going to leave anything important unsaid.

I told Dad how thankful I was that he was my dad. I thanked him for being such an incredible grandpa to my children. I reminded him how much he was loved. I talked about God and reminded him that God was with him.

Sometimes I prayed. Sometimes I simply held his hand. And almost every time I left his room, I leaned over and quietly said, “I’ll be back, Dad. I love you.”

Whether he heard every word, I didn’t know. But I wanted the words surrounding him to be ones I would never regret saying.

If someone had asked me then what hospice did, my answer would have been pretty simple. They manage pain, provide medications, send nurses and aides, help with equipment, and support people at the end of life. All of those things are true. But they aren’t what I remember most.

Like many people, I assumed hospice was something you called only during the final days of someone’s life. Fortunately, after Dad’s Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis, we learned that hospice could support us much earlier. Those months gave us time to build relationships, ask questions, and learn. By the time Dad began to decline, we weren’t meeting strangers during a crisis. We were walking through it with people we trusted. Looking back, I’m so grateful we didn’t wait.