More than 20 years ago, while I was driving around somewhere with Dad, sort of listening to a radio talk show, he told me something startling out of the blue. "I don't want to be unplugged."

I guess I hadn't been listening as much to the radio as I thought, because he had to explain it he was responding to a conversation about ending life support for critically ill people.

"If they ask you what to do," he said. "Make sure you tell them not to unplug me. I want to have every chance I can get to recover."

That was before his severe case of COPD changed him. Over the next 20 years, he gradually lost the ability to breathe. His personality changed too, and not to the most pleasant effect, as he coped with constant pain and distress.

By the time his disease progressed to end stage, he made the decision to enter home hospice care, and he signed the papers directing that he not be resuscitated of he stopped breathing.

It turned out there was nothing to unplug. And I administered the regular doses of the sedatives and morphine his hospice doctor ordered to keep him comfortable, meaning out of distress so severe it's hard to describe.

"I'm going fast," he said during one of his last episodes of consciousness. "And I'm ready."

That's quite a change!

But no matter how difficult his pain made him, no matter how much he seemed like a different person, he was the same person as always, just a changed person due to circumstances and illness.

My challenge was to understand that and be there for him through his changes, right up to the ultimate one.

I hear what you're saying about your son. It's not the same, but the principles kind of are, I think. We just have to do the best we can with what we have.