Final hours were peaceful and loving

George H.W. Bush had been fading in the last few days. He had not gotten out of bed, he had stopped eating and he was mostly sleeping. For a man who had defied death multiple times over the years, it seemed that the moment might finally be arriving.

His longtime friend and former secretary of state, James A. Baker III, arrived at Bush’s Houston home Friday morning to check on him. Bush suddenly grew alert, his eyes wide open.

“Where are we going, Bake?” he asked.

“We’re going to heaven,” Baker answered. Baker Former President George H.W. Bush died seven months after his wife, Barbara Bush, seen here at the premiere of an HBO documentary about the family in 2012.

“That’s where I want to go,” Bush said.

Barely 13 hours later, Bush was dead. The former president died in his home in a gated community in Houston, surrounded by several friends, family members, doctors and a minister. As the end neared Friday night, his son George W. Bush, the former president, who was at his home in Dallas, was put on the speakerphone to say goodbye. He told him that he had been a “wonderful dad” and that he loved him.

“I love you, too,” Bush told his son.

Those were his last words. Bush’s final days, as recounted Saturday by Baker, who saw him repeatedly at the end and was in the room when he died, were remarkably peaceful after an eventful 94-year life that took him from the skies of the Pacific during World War II to the Oval Office at the end of the Cold War.

In addition to the former secretary and his wife, Susan Baker, others in the room with Bush were his son Neil Bush and his wife, Maria, and their son, Pierce. Marshall Bush, a granddaughter, was there. So were Jean Becker, the former president’s longtime chief of staff, and the Rev. Dr. Russell J. Levenson Jr., Bush’s pastor for more than 11 years.

In an interview Saturday, Levenson said the former president was comforted that he would soon rejoin Barbara, his wife of 73 years, who died in April, and Robin, their daughter, who died in 1953 of leukemia at age 3.

On Friday evening, the Bakers and Levenson were called back to the house when it was apparent that Bush was slipped. When Levenson arrived at 9:15, he led those in the room in prayer.

There was no struggle, no prolonged period of labored breathing. At 10:10 p.m., the former president slipped away.

“If those things could be sweet,” Baker said, “it was sweet.”