Today’s guest blogger, Fank Ramirez, recounts his father’s last word  and last moments of life:

Twelve hours and one minute after my father, Frank Galvan Ramirez, died, I looked at the clock. It was 5:15 AM. I was wide awake. I started thinking. I got out of bed and I started typing, wanting to record the events of the preceding days.

 During the preceding eighteen months, my father had lived in a nursing home, loosing strength and memory. I recalled an old picture of Dad, a skinny and handsome kid from Fierro, New Mexico. At the age of four he taught himself English and became the youngest pupil at the town’s tiny school. He never stopped learning. Dad got his college degree after serving in the U. S. Navy and used his intelligence and skill to carve a niche in the burgeoning aerospace industry of Southern California. And always, he was active in his church, his feet planted firmly both in this world and the next.

Now his story had ended. A few days earlier I had gflown from Pennsylvania to California, hoping to arrive before Dad passed away. My father had been moved to my sister Vivian’s house in Rancho Cucamonga, California, with help from hospice. I walked in and told Dad I was there. He might have responded.

The next day we noticed a subtle change. Dad made no sound except the gentle intake of breath. From outside that little room came the great noise of family laughing and eating and storytelling, the way Dad liked it. It was getting dark. Suddenly my sister, Vivian, my brother, Tom, and I realized it was time. I checked a clock. 4:55. Dad would inhale, then groan. We watched the vein on his neck throbbing with his pulse. I put my handson his feet. They were cooling.  Vivian and Tom each took a hand. The last few minutes of my father’s life were as much about birth as death. We were coaxing him, coaching him, as one does during birth.

As his pulse faded to a gentle ripple, we spoke words of love, thanking him for all he had done, telling him to relax and let go. “You did a good job. We’re so proud of you. You’ve earned your rest.”  Then came slow calming, silence,  and once more a gasp.

I spoke words from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2: “Now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word, for his eyes have seen your salvation, and he has been a light to all our generations.” I spoke again, this time using words from 2 Timothy, chapter 4: “I have run the good race, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course. Henceforth is laid up for me the crown of glory, and not for me only but also for all who have longed for his –“ The next word of the Bible verse, appearing ,was drowned out by one more groan.

Then another gasp, and silence. Was he finally coming to rest? He made a noise like a sigh, then a rattle. We watched the tiny vein on his neck, sluggishly slow, fading, until there was only the faintest ripple. Vivian held up her cell phone to his nostrils, but there was no fogging. One or two more ripples, then the vein was still. “5:14,” I said aloud.

He was gone. We waited two more minutes, and we were sure. For a moment we just stood there. Then we called in the rest of the family. Dad had uttered his final word a few days before his death. He had opened his eyes and gazed at something that was hidden from everyone else in the room, and then had said simply, “Bonita.”  -- Spanish for beautiful. Whatever he saw was beautiful. Wherever he is, I’m sure, is also beautiful. Someday, I pray, we’ll all see what he saw and say the same thing: Bonita.

--Frank Ramirez