The Empty Hospital Bed

In 2018, a family in Nashville gathered in the hallway outside Room 412 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Their father, Ray Castillo, had been on a ventilator for eleven days after a catastrophic stroke. The doctors had been gentle but direct — there was nothing more they could do. The family came that Tuesday morning to say goodbye, to sit with death, to do the hard and holy work of letting go.…