Have you ever received any "deathbed" advice or "parting words" from a loved one?

I won’t judge you if you won’t judge me.

My mother: She died from complications from meningitis. She was in a coma for two weeks, she came out of it and we thought she had dodged a bullet, that we would have her back, but she died three days later of a pulmonary embolism.

She was still a little loopy but reasonably coherent and she told me: “Don’t have sex outside of marriage and learn to play an instrument, it will serve you the rest of your life.”

LOL. I actually almost really laughed when she said that, it was really so kind of weird.

She was a reasonably devout, though not dogmatic or doctrinaire Lutheran and while her vocation was statistics professor, her avocation, her true devotion was music, so it didn’t really surprise me. I just kind of had to laugh: Mom, both those ships have already sailed. You and I both know it. You provided me with violin, flute, guitar and piano lessons as a child to no avail. I am now 40. I don’t think the learning to play an instrument thing is really going to happen. And as to the no sex outside of marriage thing? Sorry. You and I both know that ain’t happening.

Then, when things got bad with my father, and I told him I was going to call an ambulance and we were going to the hospital he said: “However this works out, I wish you the best of luck.”

I was kind of like WTF? “I wish you the best of luck.” WTF kind of thing is that to say. We went to the hospital and three days later he was dead. “I wish you the best of luck?” That was five years ago and I am still trying to wrap my mind around that one.