When we last had one of our lunches, a week or so before his brain cancer began to take over his mind and body, Ed and I agreed to do a video together in which he would talk about how lucky he was, even after his diagnosis.

After all, he said, he got pretty much everything he wanted in life: a wife he still loved dearly after 47 years, four wonderful children that he loves and who love him back, his own dairy farm, a household full of animals he cares about,  and a small Army of grandchildren who are devoted to him and to Carol.

He also, he said.  had a brother and cousins and nephews and nieces and too many friends to count. Really, he said, he had no complaints. He got everything he ever wanted, he lived a full and happy life.

I remember sitting with Jack, a retired lumberjack up in the Adirondacks, I was a hospice volunteer and Jack was dying, his brother-in-law and sister were living with him in his final days because there was no one else, they were rarely there. The town highway department brought him his medicine, the hospice workers got no overtime and could not drive so far up into the woods.

As he began to gasp for breathe and die, his brother-in-law and sister ran out of the house and disappeared, leaving me along with Jack and Izzy, watching him die as he breathed his last in great pain.

A half  hour later, they came back, out of breath, and checked on Jack. “Where did you go?,” I asked.

“We had to rush to the bank,” they said, “to sign over his title and transfer his money before he passed. We had power of attorney, we didn’t want to go to probate.”

Most people don’t die in the way Ed has chosen to die, and his rock of a family has helped him to die. I told him he was very fortunate a few days ago, and he said he knew it, it was truth.

Today, I sat with Ed for awhile and thought about his good fortune in death, if such a thing is possible.  I know it sounds strange.

No one with aggressive brain cancer can be called lucky, but as a hospice volunteer for some years, I  was thinking  a lot today about how Ed is also getting what he wanted in terms of how he is dying, and that is fortunate and worthy of noting.

We all know how to be sad, and we learn only to think of death in that way, but Ed and I talked more than once about how hard it is to be grateful for what we have, and I know he would want me to write this as his body continues to fail.

Ed gets to be at home and die at home, as he wished. Most Americans who die – 83 per cent –  pass away in nursing homes and hospices and hospitals, many of them die alone.

Ed receives daily nursing care of the kind that is no longer possible in hospitals and nursing homes or assisted care, the overwhelmed nurses of our time do not have time.

Hospice aides and nurses are extraordinary, loving and present and skilled.

Hospice nurses say they choose hospice because they can spend time with their patients, touch them, talk to them, comfort them and help them. This, they say, is the way nurses used to care for people, not forced to just rush from one to another.

Ed is surrounded day and night by people he knows and loves.

They hear his calls, soothe his fear, wet his dry mouth, wipe his brow, answer his confused and troubled questions, bring him his beloved chocolate ice cream. He doesn’t have to push a buzzer and wait or lie alone in a room full of strangers, hoping for help. Ed’s grandchildren sit with him, his children visit him throughout the day, Carol is always listening and nearby, she sits by his side all night.

Ed has suffered in the least possible way. He and Carol decided that he would forego the horrific side effects of the treatment offered to patients with his kind of aggressive brain cancer, it is said by almost everyone that this is a horrible way to die, chemotherapy after chemotherapy, surgery after surgery. Doctors cannot seem to spare their patients the awful part of modern medicine. Ed knew instinctively.

Ed suffered in many ways, but not in that way. He has been guided into a deep and comfortable sleep, from which he is unlikely to completely awaken. He has not been in what the nurses call “hard pain.”

Ed lived a good and meaningful life, as he told me 100 times. He did what he loved, every single day. he said his cows were  his best friends.

He found his creative spark in his last years, the artist in him came out and shined. That meant the world to him.

His great love is by his side. Ed  has loved Carol for 47 years, they were – are – often sparky together, but also devoted. No one has ever had so loyal and attentive a companion to share his or her final days. She is making certain that Ed gets the death he chose.

This kind of death is not possible in a hospital or nursing home, it is something most of us will never know. A good death is sad, but also beautiful. This one is beautiful, it lifts the heart.

Ed is surrounded by friends. Ed has countless friends, farmers and cousins and neighbors. He is a much-loved man. They parade through the farmhouse every day.

Because he chose to die in the small room he built adjoining his house a year or so ago, his friends can come and see him talk to him, touch him, love him. He sees them everyday, has been pleased to see them, this is also something few people in hospitals or nursing homes get to do.

His family are a rock. Most of the people I saw in my hospice work rarely saw their immediate family, mostly, they gathered at the end, if they knew when it would be. They lived far away, or  were busy, or found it hard to see a loved one die.  Ed’s family all live nearby. They have gathered together to keep the farm going for as long as possible.

They do not run from  Ed’s impending death, they all wish to be a part of it.

Ed’s family are a rock, they visit him, talk to him, love him, pray for him, comfort him talk to him.

Ed is leaving in a cloud of love, I can feel it, see it, almost touch it. It seems like such a strange thing to say, but I know it to be the truth. Ed is having a good and fortunate death, few people get to die this way. He thought about his death, talked about his death, and is having the death he wanted, as comfortably and quickly as could be expected.

He is loved every minute, it is all around him. Everyone who comes near him loves him in a different way. There is nothing lonely about this death, as is the case for so many people. I saw few people in my hospice work enveloped in this kind of love.

He hasn’t missed a single Yankees game. For more than 50 years, even from childhood, Ed has listened to every Yankees game on an old radio out in the barns where he worked day and night. The old radio is next to his hospital bed, and every afternoon or evening, the Yankees game can be heard, the old timeless sounds of summer, for almost all of his life. It comforts and grounds  him, this sound of baseball.

Ed is still listening to the Yankees, every day.

That is, by any accounting, a good death.

His animals are all around him, with him every minute. When most people prepared to leave the world, they must leave their animals behind, a cruelty and suffering that seems heartless to me.

Ed has his cats, Shivers and Ophelia, his Cockatiel Ozzie, and his big sweet dumb lumbering dogs Minnie, Grissom, Miss Putz and Lovey. One or another or all of them is by his side or on his bed every minute of the day and night.

His favorite Peacock is just outside the door, Ethel the Sleep Walking Hen came in every evening to visit, and  Oz chirps and sings and dances to him, he only went silent a few days ago. Sadie the goat can’t come in the house, but Ed, who loves the grumpy and impertinent goat very much,  can hear her making noise outside, he can hear his very beloved cows as well, they are only a few feet away.

That is fortunate.

One day, Ed even told me he was lucky to have me visit him so often. He can’t say that anymore, I’m not sure he even knows me any more. But it did mean something to me. I was lucky to be there, I told him, and that was and is the truth.

Carol, good and strong person, is coming to terms with this new and awesome reality.

She said on her blog today that she now answers Ed  honestly  when he asks her why this is happening to him: “I answer as honestly as I can…’you are going to see Jesus and never have any more pain…the cancer will go away and it is the most beautiful place..’

Carol said she asked Ed if he asked Jesus into his heart to forgive his sins and to guide his journey. He said “he loved Jesus and He makes his heart feel better…for me that means he is destined for a heaven and all it’s glory,” she wrote.

This was something Carol and the family wanted very much, I am grateful she got it. She believes they will meet again now.

I am not a Christian, Ed and I never once spoke of  religion, but I have no doubt that if there is a heaven, he will go there and will be lucky once again, he will meet Carol and everyone he loves  again. Carol has taken Jesus into her heart as well, she will see him there, he will be impatiently waiting for her.

We don’t want death to come to anyone we love, unless it is a true mercy. People often say it was or is too soon. But I don’t say that. Death comes when it comes, and life lasts as long as it lasts. It is not for me to say what is too soon or too late.

That part is up to Ed’s God and Jesus. We don’t get to choose.

I am grateful for the way Ed chose to die, that is perhaps his great lesson and inspiration, the reason he wanted it to be so open. In life as in death, Ed knew what he wanted and was granted what he wanted.

That seems like good fortune to me, even today. Especially today.