A season of service, kindness, good will

Mark's eyes were closed, but there was intensity etched elsewhere on his face as he seemed to consciously struggle for each breath.

"Not a good time of year for this sort of thing," I said to his daughter, Annette, who had come to the nursing home on the first day of December to pick up her father so she could take him home to die.

"I'm not sure there is a good time of year for this sort of thing," she said quietly, her eyes focused on her father's chest as it heaved up and down. There was no reprimand in her voice; only the tired resignation of one who has spent too many months praying for her father's life to be preserved even while she fervently wished to see his suffering end.

She was right, of course. And yet something about it bothered me. Christmas is a season of miracles, replete with extraordinary gifts of life and love. It isn't a good time to die — or to watch a loved one die.

But it is a good time to serve, and that's what I saw happening as I watched the tender ministrations of Mark's family. It was there in the determined way Annette's husband, Lynn, scoured the care center in search of Mark's few precious belongings. I heard it in the loving, sensitive way Annette spoke to her father even though there wasn't much evidence that he was actually hearing anything she said. And I felt it in the gentle way Annette's brother, Scott, next to his father in the back seat of the car, draped his arm comfortingly around Mark's shoulders as his father's head rested on his own shoulder.

Scott supervised as we transported Mark from Lynn's car to the bed that had been prepared for him at his home. I was touched by the way Scott worried about his father's comfort, draping a robe around his shoulders to protect him from the cool evening breeze and fussing with his slippers. He pushed the wheelchair and almost single-handedly lifted Mark into the bed. It wasn't until Mark was comfortably situated, with a warm blanket tucked under his chin, that Lynn noticed that his father-in-law wasn't breathing.

And just like that, Mark was gone. It was as if he had been working so hard to stay alive at the care center so he could be home, surrounded by his family, when he died.

"You were a good man," Mark's wife, Sue, said tearfully as she clutched his hand and said goodbye. "You were a good husband. You were a good father. We all love you."