Barbara Bush’s final hours: ‘A beautiful, peaceful, gentle death’
In the last few days of Barbara Bush’s life, the 92-year-old former first lady talked about reuniting with those she had lost — her parents, close friends, the daughter who died long ago when she was just 3.
The final hours of her extraordinary life were spent surrounded by family and lifted up by prayer.
As evening approached on Tuesday, her son Neil Bush asked Levenson to offer a few words. The pastor knelt with the family members, who held hands and recited the traditional Episcopal “prayers at the time of dying.”
It was, said Levenson, a “beautiful, peaceful, gentle death.”
A short time later, after the family said their private good-byes, former President George H.W. Bush asked Levenson to pray one more time with Barbara and himself. The two went to her bedside and “gave thanks again for her remarkable life,” Levenson said. “I reminded him that she is more alive than she has ever been.”
For Levenson, whose friendship with the Bushes stretches back to his first days in Houston, Barbara Bush’s passing represents a deep personal loss.