My dad is in hospice.

Even writing those words feels strange because I’m not sure my dad believes he is dying.

The doctors have told us that he likely has weeks to months to live. They believe he has cancer, even though the biopsies have not given us the definitive answer you might expect from a cancer diagnosis. His body has been telling a much clearer story. He has become weaker and more tired. Eating takes too much energy. His world has gotten smaller.

But my dad still has hope.

Recently, doctors replaced a plastic stent in his bile duct with a metal one. And to my dad, that procedure represents something much bigger than a new stent.

It represents another chance.

He continues to believe that he doesn’t have cancer. He believes the stent may help him get better. Maybe he’ll start eating more. Maybe he’ll regain some strength. Maybe this isn’t the end after all.

And I find myself struggling with a question I never imagined I would have to answer:

What is the kindest thing I can do?

Do I encourage him?

Do I say, Yes, Dad. Maybe this will help. Let’s see what happens.

Do I let him hold onto the belief that he might get stronger?

Or am I supposed to help him understand that he is dying?

There are things people talk about doing at the end of life. Saying what needs to be said. Making peace. Remembering the past. Talking about fears. Saying goodbye.

But how do you help someone do those things when they aren’t ready to believe there is anything to say goodbye to?

I don’t want to take hope away from my father.

Hope is powerful. Hope gives us something to reach toward when everything around us feels uncertain. And perhaps hope doesn’t always have to be realistic to provide comfort.

But I also don’t want my dad to miss the opportunity to say the things he might want to say because everyone around him was too afraid to acknowledge what was happening.

That is the part I struggle with.

Sometimes love makes us want to protect people from painful truths. Sometimes love makes us want to tell the truth.

And sometimes I have no idea which one is love.

I’m beginning to wonder, though, whether I have been asking myself the wrong question.

Maybe my job isn’t to make my dad accept that he is dying.

Acceptance belongs to him.

I can’t decide when—or whether—he gets there.

Maybe my job is simply to meet him where he is.

If he wants to talk about getting stronger, I can listen.

If he wants to tell me he thinks the new stent is going to give him another chance, I don’t have to argue with him.

But I don’t have to promise him something I don’t know to be true either.

I can say, I hope the stent helps you feel better.

Because I do.

I can hope he has more energy tomorrow.

I can hope he enjoys something he eats.

I can hope he has a day when he feels a little more like himself.

I can hope we have another conversation, another laugh, another story I have heard a hundred times.

And if someday he says, I think I’m dying, I can resist the instinct to tell him he’s wrong.

I can sit beside him and listen.

Maybe that’s the space between false hope and forcing acceptance.

Just being there.

Hospice is often described as giving up hope, but I am starting to understand that it may actually ask us to redefine hope.

I desperately want the biggest kind of hope—the hope that my dad will somehow recover and this won’t be happening.

But maybe there are smaller hopes now.

A comfortable afternoon.

A favorite visitor.

A little less pain.

A moment of clarity.

Feeling safe.

Knowing he is loved.

And maybe my dad gets to hold onto his bigger hope for as long as he needs it.

He doesn’t have to experience dying the way I think he should.

He doesn’t have to reach some perfect state of acceptance so that the rest of us can feel that he was ready.

Maybe he never will.

I’m trying to understand that loving someone through the end of their life isn’t about leading them toward death.

It’s about walking beside them wherever they are.

And right now, my dad still has hope.

So perhaps the kindest thing I can do isn’t to take it away.

It’s to hold his hand while I carry the truth quietly beside it.