By January 2018, they had an answer. He actually had stage four kidney cancer, Bruton said. He was basically given about two to four months to live.
When Bruton was a kid, his dad travelled a lot, so he didn t get to know his dad that well. But after Bruton s mom died, his dad moved from North Carolina to live with Bruton in Colorado. Bruton was in his 40s, his dad was in his 70s.
A year later, his dad got sick. Once they got the diagnosis, a woman Bruton was seeing suggested a death doula. And of course, I d never heard of it. It sounded a little bit, a little bit hocus pocus-y to me, he said. I thought, well, I don t think my dad would be up for anything like that.