Chapter 18 - THE PEACEFUL GOODBYE
Time is the only unstoppable force, and it eventually caught up with Gabriel.
He was seventy-eight when his heart began to fail.
He did not want to die in a sterile hospital room surrounded by beeping monitors.
He asked to be moved into the hospice wing we had built at the center.
He wanted to spend his final days looking out at the garden.
The girls cleared their schedules immediately.
Elara took a leave of absence from her ethics board.
Cora cancelled a regional tour.
They practically lived in his room for three weeks.
The atmosphere was not filled with desperate, chaotic grief.
It was filled with a quiet, profound reverence for a life well-lived.
They played chess on a small table next to his bed.
Cora played her guitar softly while he drifted in and out of sleep.
He told terrible, dad-joke level puns that made Elara groan and Cora laugh until she cried.
One afternoon, while the girls were getting lunch, I sat alone with him.
He looked frail, but his eyes were still bright.
“You gave them a good life,” he whispered, his voice raspy.
“We gave them a good life, Gabe,” I corrected him. “You were the father they needed. The one who never demanded anything.”
He smiled softly.
“I just liked being around them. They are spectacular.”
“They love you very much.”
He nodded, closing his eyes.
“That is enough for one lifetime.”
He passed away two days later, peacefully, holding Cora’s hand on one side and Elara’s on the other.
His death was a stark contrast to the miserable, isolated ends of Brenda and Helena.
Gabriel died surrounded by people who adored him entirely by choice.
There was no coercion.
There were no legal contracts keeping them in the room.
They stayed because love, when freely given, is the strongest tether in the world.
We buried his ashes in the garden, right under the large oak tree where he used to teach them chess.
We did not mourn him as a tragedy.
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We celebrated him as a triumph.
He was the biological donor who became a true father, simply by respecting their humanity.
