Almost the end now

Thank you for all the comments. The last few days of his life all ran together and I didn’t even know what date it was when he died- I made a guess and it was wrong. So, he actually died on Wednesday the 5th, in case anyone was wondering exactly where in the world I lived that my Wednesday could have been on the 4th.
I had finally convinced my mom that we were going to start morphine for my dad because he was in such pain and his breathing was horrendous. He couldn’t lay down on his left side or back because his right lung was not working, so he always laid on his right side to keep the left lung open. As a result all his fluid shifted to that side of his body and so it was terribly swollen and bruised. The cancer went into his spine and shoulder and hip and my mom was only giving him percosets, so I finally got him started on morphine and ativan. The pain started lessening after a full day on morphine, then by the second day on morphine he was starting to ease off of his right side for the first time in so long, then on the morning of the third day he was lying on his back. He had went through the pulling at the sheets, his hair, his oxygen, all that- he was very distressed so Hospice told me I needed to catch him up a little with the Ativan. So after a few more hourly doses of that he was finally comfortable and lying there peacefully for the first time in a couple of months. After a couple of hours of that his breathing started to get slower and slower, and I knew he wasn’t really there anymore. Our Hospice nurse came back and checked him and said he was in a coma now and that he most probably wouldn’t wake up again, which he didn’t. His breathing got slower and slower through the evening, and I sat by his bedside counting seconds between breaths. I prayed for him to stop breathing and then when he would stop I’d pray for him to start again. Finally my mom came back in the room and crawled in bed with him, and I put the blanket over them, put their poodle in the bed with them and turned out the lights and went to sit in the next room for a while in the dark. A while later my mom came out and said he was gone. I think he needed to be able to not be focusing on the pain and gasping for breath so much so that he could finally let go and find peace. So, while I know so many people hate the use of morphine, in my dad’s case it eased his last couple of days so that I didn’t have to watch him go through a really gruesome death like he would have without it. Anyway, thank you all so much for all the help and support.