The kissing, the hugging, the embracing, holding his daughters with the last scrap of energy in his body, the dying man showed how much he loved his three daughters. His son wasn't there; he was in some other city far away, but he would come the moment his father had breathed his last, and that moment was approaching.
He watched the pictures on the television screen and knew the tale and the play being performed. He even smiled or seemed to smile. He greeted the visitor with a flicker of his eye, opening wide his eyelids, and one blue eye stared at the visitor.
There, he was in the hospital bed that the family had moved into his apartment after the doctors had said there was nothing more they could do for him. He must now lie down and let his children love him and pass the time until the last breath will leave his body. When would that be? It happened on Thursday night at 10 o'clock.
Everybody had left him, and when they came back, there he was. His body had firmed like a log of wood. He was not in his body anymore, or his body was not in a condition to accept his person himself.
He was, as people say, "gone. He's gone". Where had he gone? You could see his body, but there was no doubt that he was not inside that particular body.
He looked the same as always, his white hair, freckled face, nose, and mouth in a comfortable smile—not a smile, but a look that did not signify agony of any sort. His body was there, but he wasn't in his body.
Now, the doctor had come in and asked everybody to leave. She wanted to sign the death certificate. Before doing that, she had to take his pulse and do all kinds of formalistic actions which were necessary before filling out a form and making the decision that he was dead.
One couldn't state that he was dead without a medical examination taking place. They took place, and of course, she signed the document that he had died, of a collapse of all the organs of his body after they did not have any more energy to function, energy which had been given to them by the heart.
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