From Carol Ball
Dear All,
I have some very sad news. David passed away last night about 10 p.m. He was very peaceful, and his sons Christopher and Thomas were at his bedside. He took a deep breath and sighed, and then he was gone.
On Thursday evening when I was with him, he said, please, take me to a better place. In between periods of sleeping, he continued to say, please, take me to Heaven, please, Jesus, take me, and so on. This all happened about 6 o’clock. So I knew he was ready to go to be with the Lord and it gave me great peace and filled me with gratitude. Later that evening he visited with Dave, who had just come in from Vermont. We had asked the hospital staff to stop all the sedatives (he was not in pain), and keep him on IV so he would be as alert as possible when Deborah and Dave were with him. When Dave arrived and said, I love you, Dad, David replied, I love you, too. You are a wonderful guy, Dave. I am very proud of you. It was the most lucid he had been since Monday morning.
It was such a gift – he had special moments with all of the children, he knew we all were there and we were surrounded with love and Gods presence. On Friday morning we were discussing Hospice arrangements with the nurses but he was not nearly as responsive and appeared to be distressed, so the doctor started him on morphine and another drug for anxiety. We all spent a lot of time with him on Friday but he was mostly sleeping all day. The nurses were thinking it would be another day or two before he passed so it came as a surprise, otherwise more of us would have been there.
It was a blessing for him to have such a merciful end. While we are all in shock and will miss him dreadfully, he was at peace and is now with the Lord.
The funeral will be on Saturday, March 29 at Bruton Parish Church at 2 p.m. and interment will follow in the churchyard. There will be a reception afterwards in the parish hall. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Bruton Parish Church or a charity of your choice.
Love to you all and thank you for your messages of love and support,
Carol
PS Sorry for all the bad punctuation, I am typing on Davids keyboard and it is stuck and wont do apostrophes or quotation marks.
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On Thursday, March 20, 2014 5:51 PM
Dear all,
I have some very sad news to share. David is in the hospital and is gravely ill. He had a bad fall Sunday morning and bumped his head. The head injury was not serious but all the tests given showed that he was very sick with a life-threatening illness. They suspected an infection, an acceleration of his autoimmune disease lupus, or cancer.
We got the diagnosis last night. He has a very aggressive leukemia/lymphoma. He began feeling weak and very tired about a month ago but his symptoms got much worse last Wednesday. His doctors thought it was a lupus flare but he did not respond to treatment, so we had a follow-up appointment scheduled for Monday. He was admitted to the hospital that day and has been declining very rapidly since then. His cancer is too advanced and he is too frail for chemotherapy to be appropriate, so he will be transferred to a hospice facility as soon as a bed becomes available.
Our sons Jon and Thomas have been here since the beginning of this acute illness and by 9pm we will have all the children here. My sister Anne is at the house cooking up a storm so we will have nourishing food, and our friends have been very supportive. This afternoon Rev Charles Robinson from Bruton Parish Church came by and Deb assisted him in giving David Holy Communion. Charles also said some very comforting prayers from the prayer book for someone with a short time to live. It was a beautiful service.
I ask you for your prayers and know that you will be as shocked by this as we were, but we are grateful that he does not seem to be in pain and that we had some recent visits with our young grandchildren that will give them happy memories of their grandpa.
My cox email account does not work well here so if you’d like to send us a message please use cball1221@gmail.com or call or text me at 757-810-4239.
Love to all,
Carol