Last Words To A Dying Man

By Roshel

He had been taken critically ill and had been rushed to the hospital. There, the doctors had said that he probably had less than two days to live.

When they heard the news, a couple of his friends rushed to the hospital, thinking this might be their last chance to meet him. When they entered his room, they could hardly recognize him. He was pale and wrinkled and shriveled up.

They weren’t able to communicate much with him, because he was too weak to utter more than anything than a few groans. They didn’t want to strain him by compelling him to speak or force himself to smile. They just gave him a little wave of the hand and sat silently on a row of chairs that had been placed at the foot of his bed. Then, after a while, they got up to go, uttering a few words in parting as they did so.

“Take care, you’ll be fine very soon. Stay safe, be good, eat well, drink lots of water, rest well and you’ll be up and about in just a few days,” said one.

“Get well soon! Don’t worry, things will be fine. You’re in the best hospital, and you have the best doctors treating you,” said another.

“Cheer up! You’ll be fit and fine in a few days, and then I promise you we’ll all go to Bermuda on a cruise and have a whale of a time,” said yet another.

A fourth friend sat silently, observing the scene in the room. “How strange it is!” he thought to himself. “Here is this man who is probably going to die in a day or two, and here are these people who are offering him such false comfort. ‘Take care, you’ll be fine very soon’, one of them says—a blatant falsehood to say to a dying man! Another stupidly says 'Get well soon!', as if he can get well like that! And then, he tries to assure him there’s no need to worry as he’s in the supposedly best hospital, with the supposedly best doctors treating him — but doesn’t he know that not even the best hospitals and doctors in the world can prevent death arriving when it has to? And this other one is really quite the limit—conjuring up dreams of a cruise to Bermuda on a luxury liner to a man who in all probability won’t place a foot out of his hospital bed before he dies! How foolish it all seems!”

The other friends, having said their words, left the room, one by one. Now, it was this friend’s turn to speak. He knew what his parting words should be.

He walked over to the head of the bed on which his friend lay. Then, bending down low and gently stroking his head, he said, “May God bless you with what’s best for you, dear”.

The dying man looked up, surprised at what he had just heard.

“May God bless you with what’s best for you, dear” he repeated.

A soft smile spread across the dying man’s tired face. “Thank you, dear. What beautiful words!” he managed to whisper. “Thank you very much.”