The former First Lady believes her long-suffering husband recognized her when he stared into her eyes for an instant before taking his last breath, his daughter Patti Davis writes. "It was the greatest gift he could have given me," the former First Lady told her family.
Sobbing, shaking and knowing death was imminent, she held her husband’s hand about 1 p.m. Saturday as he inhaled deeply and opened his eyes for the first time in five days. While most thought Alzheimer’s disease had robbed former President Reagan of all his memory, the last look he gave his wife was one of deep acknowledgment, Davis writes for People magazine in its upcoming edition. "At the last moment when his breathing told us this was it, he opened his eyes and looked straight at my mother. Eyes that had not opened for days did, and they weren’t chalky or vague," Davis recalls. "They were clear and blue and full of life. If a death can be lovely, his was."
Davis and her brother Ron were standing next to their father’s bed when the astonishing interchange between their parents took place. "In his last moment he taught me that there is nothing stronger than love between two people, two souls," Davis writes. "It was the last thing he could do to show my mother how entwined their souls are and it was everything."
This is an affirmation of life, and life afterwards. When my sister died of cancer, she had been in acoma a couple of days, and came to for an instant and she and my brother-in-law had a moment. |