“At 80 years old, my father—an active and productive person through his youth and midlife—had a double stroke and spent his last years unable to speak and eat. He simply was. I used to fly to Toronto, where he was hospitalized, and sit by his bed, reading to him, praying with him, and, perhaps most important of all, acknowledging he was precious and a gift—not that he had gifts or was using gifts but that he was a gift. I often wished I could understand what he was thinking, feeling, and experiencing, but, alas, he could not speak. He had shifted from doing to being […]”