Pumpkin and Spice

As I've told you all, my father had recently been fighting a very difficult battle against MRSA, which unfortunately infected his heart and lungs. I flew up to Kansas a couple weeks ago, but I didn't mention that I was going up because he was going into hospice. I arrived on the 17^th, and on March 22^nd, Dad passed away.
It's of course hard, and very sad... but it's hard to explain how extremely sick he was, and how heartbreaking it was to see him in his hospital room, looking so tired and ill and weak. My mom, brother and I tried to count ourselves lucky that we were able to be with him and help make him comfortable during his days in palliative care.
Once Dad was moved out of critical care and into his palliative care (hospice) room, he was permitted to eat solid foods if he wished. (In critical care he had a feeding tube.) When we were told that, I knew I had to make him something, and it didn't take much thinking to decide what- after I graduated from pastry school, Dad was always telling me how much he loved lemon cake, and when I opened my own bakery I had to make lemon cake. (Nevermind that I kept reminding him that I don't really want to open a bakery...) When I asked him if he would like me to make him lemon cake, his eyes lit up and he nodded (he couldn't speak because of the tracheotomy he had) and mouthed to me that he wanted "lots of frosting".
Being in Kansas, I didn't have access to my notes/baking journals/recipes, so I just used the lemon chiffon recipe from the Better Homes and Garden cookbook (my grandma and I have the same copy- from 1965... I think mine is my paternal grandmother's old copy.) The only change I made was adding lemon extract to make it more lemony. I portioned it into cupcakes, baked them, then filled them with lemon curd. I made a simple buttercream with butter, shortening, confectioner's sugar, lemon juice and lemon extract, and topped the cupcakes with a generous mound of icing.
When I brought them into Dad, he looked so excited. I cut one up and fed it to him slowly, one bite at a time. Since he hadn't eaten solid food in a month, he hadn't been eating much, but he ate a whole cupcake. When he was finished he mouthed "Thank you" and that he loved it, then I held his hand until he fell asleep.
It made me feel good to be able to share that moment with him. It's hard to let him go, especially as he was so young. I feel like there are so many more moments I wanted to have with him, but I remind myself that no matter how much time we have with a loved one, we always wish we had just a little more. We can't waste our time wishing for what we didn't have- we have to be grateful for the moments that we were given together.

Again, I want to thank you all for your kind words and support during these difficult months- I really can't express how much it means to me.