U.S. Navy Veteran Connie Willhite has terminal cancer, but before he took his last breath he asked for two small requests. The first plea was to be baptized. The family organized the baptism to make Connie happy. The second request was to go fishing. Not the easiest of requests to fulfill considering Connie is weak from his treatment and bedridden. However, Connie would get his last wish.
Greg Senters, his hospice social worker, made it happen. Senters supplied the bait and gear and rolled the Vietnam vet and his bed to a nearby pond at the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center in Dublin, Georgia.
Senters warned the frail 68-year-old that he wasn’t sure that Connie would catch anything.
“Fishing is not catching,” Connie told Senters.
It turns out that Connie caught four bream on his final fishing trip.
“All of a sudden, the cancer and everything else went away,” Senters said. “What you see is that precious few moments of someone really enjoying life.”
“A dying person can teach you a lot about living,” Senters told CNN. “Sometimes we get so caught up in the day to day we forget about what’s important.”
Three days later, Willhite died peacefully.
RIP Connie and thank you for your service.
[CNN]