Dad Takes Last Breath & Dies, Daughter Writes Letter to His 'Angel' in Same Hospital
Down through the ages, wise people have pointed out that grief and joy often hold hands.
Whatever the reason, there’s a very fine line separating hope and heartache, and the birth of little Kingston James Hall in Lafayette, Louisiana, on Jan. 12, perfectly illustrates it.
Connie Despanie and Benjamin Hall knew they wanted to call their little boy Kingston.
But even after he’d entered the world at Lafayette General Medical Center, they were stuck on his middle name, trying to make a decision.
They were stuck, at least, until Dr. Jennifer Pugliese, who’d helped deliver Kingston, handed Despanie a letter. That was when the new mother started to cry.
“She started reading it silently, and she just had tears streaming down her face,” Pugliese told CBS News. “It was really beautiful.”
Over in another corner of Lafayette General, another story had just reached its end. Eighty-six-year-old James Lee Grimmett, father of nine and Air Force veteran, had just taken his last breath.
“He was a good father,” his daughter, Jaime Fontenot, told KADN. “We didn’t get away with too much, although we tried.
“He would let his little girls put sponge rollers in his hair while he was sitting in a chair acting like he was sleeping.”
Those fond memories combined with gentle strains of music that filtered through the hospital’s PA system moments after Grimmett’s death prompted Fontenot to do something unorthodox.
Every time a baby is born, Lafayette General plays a lullaby over its speakers. And right after Grimmett passed away, Kingston Hall was born.
So Fontenot wrote a simple note and delivered it to the nurses’ station. It read, “To my dad’s angel, even though I will never know your name, you are the first child born here after my dad’s passing.
“When one life is taken, another is given. Please keep my dad in your prayers.”
That was the very note that Connie Despanie had been reading — the note that convinced her to make her newborn’s middle name mirror that of the deceased veteran. It’s a touching act, one that honors a life lived even as a new one begins.
Of course, Fontenot was wrong about at least one thing. She would learn the baby’s name.
Nurses introduced the two women to one another. Even better, the families plan to stay in touch. As Fontenot said, “Family is everything, and if you don’t have faith you don’t have anything.”
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