“My husband was only 49 years old and in hospice care for just seven days when he went home to be with the Lord.” These words came to me in a letter from a young wife following the death of her husband. “In the short time he was there, the conversations we had with him and those we witnessed him having with others gave us a profound sense of peace and joy in the midst of our sadness.”
She wrote about him smiling, with his eyes closed, as he talked to someone they could not see. He would pause, as if listening closely, and then chuckle before responding. At one point she asked to whom he was speaking and her husband said it was her own father. He told her that her father was asking if today was a holiday; he replied that it wasn’t. Then he paused and laughed, saying, “Dad says every day is a holiday in heaven.” At one point, with his eyes still closed, he said to her, “I can’t tell you how beautiful it is here.”
Moments after his death, their daughter had the feeling that he was still very much in the room with them. She felt as if he was saying to her, “I have always been so proud of you!” Just as those words echoed in her heart, her uncle put his arm around her shoulder and said, “Your dad has always been so proud of you.” She knew her dad was validating what her heart had just heard.
The young wife said they often wished they had had a tape recorder in the room that day. The things he said shortly before his death truly gave them all glimpses of heaven.
