Here at LittleThings, we’re big advocates of living everyday to the fullest.
Life is an incredible privilege, and it’s made all the more precious by the knowledge that someday it must come to an end.
That’s part of the reason we have a special place in our hearts for people and organizations that devote themselves to making sure folks reaching the end of their time leave this world on their own terms.
After all, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived, there are always dreams left to accomplish, as we saw with the 95-year-old grandma who’s wish to meet a Budweiser Clydesdale finally came true.
So we can’t help but cheer when we see folks move heaven and earth to fulfill the last wishes of people in hospice or other end-of-life care.
And that’s exactly what one Georgia VA center did when Connie Willhite, a dying Vietnam vet, told them his sweet, humble last wish: to catch a fish.
Scroll through the gallery below to learn more about what the VA did to make Willhite’s wish come true!
When Connie Willhite realized that it was almost his time, he had just two goals he wanted to accomplish before he passed on.
He wanted to be baptized, in a ceremony with friends and family, and he wanted to go fishing one last time.
With help from a spiritual advisor, Willhite's baptism went off without a hitch, but fishing was proving a bit more complicated.
The Carl Vinson VA Medical Center in Dublin, GA, where Willhite was receiving treatment, rallied together to find a solution.
They put Willhite into a motorized hospital bed, and brought him to Lake Leisure, a small body of water right behind the VA center, accessible by road.
There, they set him up with bait and fishing rod he could wield from the comfort of his hospital bed.
Still, the obliging folks at the VA were worried that, despite the effort, the fish might not be biting, writing in a Facebook post, " After all the preparation, we had no idea if he would actually catch anything."
They shouldn't have worried; for Willhite, it didn't matter if he got a single nibble.
All he really cared about was the feeling of going fishing; he told them, "There’s nothing like fishing. Even when they’re not biting, it’s still a good day to be outside. I know I’m dying and the cancer is going to get me…but as long as I can go, I want to fish."
Moreover, despite his relaxed come-what-may attitude towards catching anything, it was a good day on the water, and Willhite managed to catch four fish.
Even if he hadn't caught a single minnow, we have a feeling that Willhite would have been content with just the sensation of being out on the water, with the lake rippling and the sun shining.
His associations with water, particularly fresh water, go back decades, to his time serving in the brown-water Navy during the Vietnam War, which worked mostly on the riverways of Vietnam.
During that tumultuous time, fishing was a refuge and a comfort; according to the VA's post, "During even the most challenging parts of his life, Willhite had found that fishing could soothe his mind and help him escape."
For the VA, helping veterans find peace of mind is among the highest priorities, even if that means rolling a motorized hospital bed out to the lake.
Willhite's social worker, Greg Senters, perhaps put it best, saying, "I don’t think anybody becomes a social worker because they want to complete mountains of paperwork and attend to the administrative processes that need to be done. We do it because we want to be able to make people’s lives at least a little better. At the end of the day, we want to know that we helped someone."
In Willhite's case, we think Senters and the whole VA can rest assured that they helped him achieve contentment with one last fishing trip.
Willhite, 68, passed away quietly on August 29th from complications of cancer, but before he went, he caught four fish.
In his obituary, his family remembers him as, "a great fisherman," and we have know doubt that his final fish trip helped him pass on peacefully.
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