AITA for missing my daughter's first Thanksgiving to sit with a dying hospice patient?
I am 68 and have volunteered at hospice for six years since retiring from nursing. This month I sat with Walter (91M), a widower with no children, who had no one else visiting him at all. I had promised him weeks earlier that I would not let him be alone if it happened near a holiday, since so many of our patients pass over Thanksgiving and their rooms go quiet while the staff are stretched thin. On Wednesday night the hospice nurse called and said his breathing had changed and it likely would not be long. My daughter Carol (44F) had planned her very first Thanksgiving hosting since her divorce, with my two grandchildren, and had asked me weeks before to come early and help with the turkey. I told her I might be late. When Walter took his final hours that morning I stayed with him, and I missed the entire dinner. He passed peacefully around 3pm with my hand in his, which meant everything to me. Carol says I chose a stranger over my own family on a day that mattered to her more than she ever let on, and that her aunt Diane had to fill in and it was not the same. She has not called me since Thursday, and my son put in the family group chat that I "always do this." I keep thinking of the verse about doing unto the least of these, but I also cannot stop seeing her face when I finally walked in at 6pm.
This Case Is Closed
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y'all is it wrong to have a favorite kid's plate at the table and nobody else can sit there??