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as might so easily have happened. If I remember it correctly, you are the friend who shares his birthday with him. On that day, Candlemas Day, I took up two blessed candles with the flowers for him, and lighted them on the table by his bed, with the deep wish and prayer that he might be given the only good gift for him as he then was - he did not even really understand that it was his birthday - of going on very soon, far away from that wretched place where we had seen him so often by then. It had become completely certain that he was not going to improve, in fact that he was going still farther down hill, but that he had another stroke that next Sunday evening was a surprise to the doctors, to us. He was in a coma from then on, when we saw him Monday and Tuesday in an oxygen tent, and without suffering and probably without regaining consciousness, he slipped away at 6 P.M. on Wednesday.

The real loss and grief had been already gone through, in that time from November 20th on, when we could see ourselves that he was not going to recover, as his first doctor had predicted in fact from the very beginning. We were not quite ready to believe him then.

I have never felt such an atmosphere of peace and joy at any funeral service, and I hope that you too were aware of that, although you did not yourself know all the circumstances.

With thanks again for the flowers, and for your presence there which I know meant much for Dan,

Yours sincerely, 
Daphne M. Hoffman Mebane