My father is in his final season

Hospice last Wednesday. He still has good hours. He told a joke yesterday and we all laughed too hard, the way you do. My mother is sleeping next to him every night. My brother flew in from Sydney; he hadn't seen our father since Christmas and now they are catching up on twenty years in whispered conversations between morphine. Pray for time. Not lots — just enough to say the things. Pray for my father to feel held. Pray for my mother, who has been his quiet best friend for 47 years. Pray for the grandchildren to remember him laughing. And pray that when it comes, it comes gently, in the night, with someone holding his hand.