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My father’s hospital room was on the third floor, with a view of the Rocky Mountains. We were right above the childbirth unit, which seemed appropriate somehow. I remember thinking, I’ve seen the beginning of life, and that was messy and painful, too. Now I was seeing the end.

"Want another ice chip?" I scooped a small piece of ice into his mouth. It wasn’t much, but it was all he was allowed to have. I straightened pillows and adjusted blankets. He didn’t speak much; when he did, his memory flitted from Wyoming to Missouri to Colorado. He knew me, and that was enough.

I cornered doctors and nurses in the hall and told them about Dad. "He was way ahead of his time," I said. A dignified college professor, he cooked, bought groceries, and spent time with us kids in a day when men didn’t see a need to do so. I told them how he loved birds and nature, liked to stop for "afternoon coffee" every day at 3 p.m., and was so outgoing and sociable it took him 20 minutes to pay for a tank of gas.

I wanted them to see him as a loved and treasured individual, not just a worn-out body hooked to tubes and monitors.

The nights, when Mom and I went back to the house, were the saddest of all. Seeing Dad’s pills on the table, his bird books by his chair, his yogurts in the refrigerator . . . and knowing he was never coming back.

Doctors’ reports were confusing and conflicting, but at last the truth came out: There was no hope for recovery. We asked them to make him as comfortable as possible.

The last day, I told him again that I loved him. "You’re the best dad in the whole world," I said. He looked at me and squeezed my hand for a long time, the way he used to do when I was little. Only this time, I felt like I was comforting him. "It will be all right," I whispered.

That night, my mother and I read the Compline service with him. The familiar prayers seemed to calm him, and he drifted off to sleep.

He died the next morning. It was the saddest day of my life.

We buried him four days later, in a cemetery shaded by the trees he had donated over the years. "In sure and certain hope of the resurrection . . ."

I blinked back tears. I knew my father was safe with Jesus. I only wondered how I would manage without him. No longer could I pick up the phone and ask for advice, share a joke, or swap stories of my Seattle Mariners and his Colorado Rockies.

Our last morning in Colorado, my husband Steve and I hiked up the canyon trail above my parents’ house. Coming into a clearing by a stream, we heard a series of chirps and calls.

"What’s that?" he asked.

"I don’t know."

I scanned the willows with my binoculars. At last the singer revealed itself. A medium-sized bird with a bright yellow breast. "That’s a new one for me."

It was a yellow-breasted chat, a warbler noted for its variety of vocalizations.

I smiled. Ravens fed the prophet Elijah; certainly a warbler could be God’s messenger. This chatty bird reassured me that Dad was free, now he was trading tales with the saints in glory. His wisdom and gentleness of spirit would live on here below in the things he had taught me. And someday we would be together again.